{"id":24940,"date":"2016-11-10T15:57:32","date_gmt":"2016-11-10T22:57:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/?p=24940"},"modified":"2016-11-10T15:57:32","modified_gmt":"2016-11-10T22:57:32","slug":"five-questions-for-tracy-gonzalez-padron","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/?p=24940","title":{"rendered":"Five questions for Tracy Gonzalez-Padron"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Tracy Gonzalez-Padron speaks at a Nov. 3 business ethics case competition at UCCS.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Editor’s Note:<\/strong> This article originally appeared in the Nov. 10 edition of CU Connections<\/p>\n

On more than one occasion, a former student has told Tracy Gonzalez-Padron,\u00a0that her efforts to promote ethics education have served them well. One MBA student said he had an ethical problem at work and that if he had not attended Gonzalez-Padron\u2019s class, and experienced the focus on ethics in the MBA program, he wouldn\u2019t have recognized the incident as an ethical problem, nor would he have known how to handle it.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI hear from people all of the time that they just had a problem at work and it reminded them of something we talked about, and it shows we made a difference,\u201d said Gonzalez-Padron, director,\u00a0\u00a0Daniels Fund Ethics Initiative and associate professor in the College of Business.<\/p>\n

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Gonzalez-Padron came to UCCS in 2008. That same year, she became involved with the push to bring the Daniels Fund Ethics Initiative to the campus.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cVenkat (Reddy, dean of the College of Business and associate vice chancellor for online education) put out a call to anyone interested in ethics to help prepare a grant proposal and I raised my hand,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m not sure how many were interested, but I saw that the ethics grant allowed me to make a difference and that\u2019s what I really want to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Daniels Fund Ethics Initiative Collegiate Program partners with 10 business schools and one law school to strengthen principle-based ethics education in Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.<\/p>\n

Gonzalez-Padron had a long professional career in the corporate world and only decided to earn her Ph.D. in her 40s.<\/p>\n

\u201cThroughout my business career, I really loved developing staff and co-workers and helping, and so I started teaching in addition to working and found that I really enjoyed it,\u201d she said. \u201cSo when an opportunity opened up, I took a year long position at Ferris State University. Someone suggested that I get my Ph.D., and I applied at Michigan State University and got in.\u201d<\/p>\n

After earning her degree, she began looking for a permanent teaching position. The University of Colorado was attractive for several reasons. First, Eric Olson in the College of Business is well-known in the marketing field and she was told she would fit in well at the college and with her colleagues. She also wanted to teach in a place where she could make a difference. At larger universities, she said, you\u2019re often just another faculty member. In addition, one of the members of her dissertation committee told her of the Daniels Fund and an opportunity to focus on ethics in the region.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought this was perfect because I would be able to choose the kind of research I wanted to do,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Finally, she said, she visited the campus on a \u201cbeautiful September sunny day and recognized that the quality of life in Colorado Springs was a reason for leaving Michigan.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI loved corporate. I loved what I did in the business world, but what I find is that working as a professor, you\u2019re not only sharing your knowledge with the students, but you are learning from them. They are always challenging you; they\u2019re always seeking for you to be up to date. There\u2019s always a feeling of accomplishment in this role.\u201d<\/p>\n

1. How does the Daniels Fund Ethics Initiative at UCCS work to instill ethics in students and how does the initiative connect with the community?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Daniels Fund Ethics Initiative at UCCS allows us to foster an interest in ethics education that we couldn\u2019t do normally and it does this in three ways.<\/p>\n

First, we encourage ethics to be incorporated in the classrooms throughout the campus and we do that by giving the faculty the tools or resources to develop materials specific to their disciplines. Ethics are involved in every single discipline and no matter what a person\u2019s major, they have to realize that they likely will work for an organization where there may be pressure to do something that is not the right thing to do. We empower faculty to learn or prepare materials and that\u2019s why we have ethics fellows \u2013 seven new ones this year. The fellows act as champions by developing these materials, but what also happens is that their enthusiasm for ethics permeates to the students.<\/p>\n

The second way is student engagement. We find that classroom learning is great, but when a student has the opportunity to apply it or demonstrate ethical decision-making or ethical leadership, the learning is reinforced. Our students are able to network with the business community or people in their profession that can either be mentors or possible employers. We also offer all kinds of speaking engagements where students don\u2019t just listen, but also meet with the speaker in small groups. We host a business ethics case competition \u2013 we just had one on campus on Nov. 3. We sponsor UCCS students to compete in regional and national competitions, and attend conferences or other events where they explore ways of showing ethical leadership or ethical decision-making. Along with that, we have a student organization called the Student Center of Public Trust that focuses on ethical leadership.<\/p>\n

The third path is through outreach. The Daniels Fund has given us additional funding and we are now the hub for the Southern Colorado Higher Education Consortium, which is composed of 10 universities and community colleges, including UCCS. We travel to each campus to conduct a workshop on teaching ethics.<\/p>\n

2. How has the initiative evolved during your tenure and what are your future goals for the program? <\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been director since the beginning, and Venkat Reddy also has been involved since the start. Liz Moore, our program manager,\u00a0 joined us in the second year of the program. None of the people from the original schools involved really envisioned what it was going to be and it took us awhile to feel around and see how we could make a difference. One of the biggest turnarounds when it comes to scaling the program outside of the College of Business is the fellows program. Now we have fellows in every single college and throughout the campus, and that has made a huge difference.<\/p>\n

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As for the future, we\u2019ve just changed the website<\/a> so that we can target our focus \u2013 ethics in technology, for instance, as the National Cybersecurity Center comes to Colorado Springs \u2013 the prevalence of drones and even social media. We\u2019re creating a big focus on those areas with different organizations or communities, either at UCCS or further from UCCS.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Another focus is ethics in sport because, of course, Colorado Springs is the hub of the Olympics and national governing bodies and collegiate programs. We\u2019re especially doing a lot on ethics and fraud \u2013 marketing fraud, accounting fraud \u2013 and organizational ethics, especially good examples that reinforce an ethical culture. We also are focusing on behavioral ethics, which talks about more personal ethical decision-making and the recognition of why good people do bad things and how to prevent falling into those traps.<\/p>\n

I think we\u2019ve found our groove over the past seven years so we can target the topics and issues that resonate most with our community. We don\u2019t want ethics to be boring.<\/p>\n

3. You mentioned this year\u2019s seven faculty members who will serve as UCCS Daniels Fund Ethics Initiative Fellows. Who are these ethics experts?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Our website calls them ethics experts, but they are actually experts in ethics education. There are two sets of experts: One is our UCCS ethics fellows, and this year, we\u2019ve instituted, with the Southern Colorado Higher Education Consortium, the ethics champions. These ethics champions have the same role as our fellows, which is to champion ethics in their discipline. What that means is that they might have projects \u2013 for instance, a class they want to develop — or they want to find more material that they want to use in their courses. They also promote student engagement opportunities and we collaborate with them during events.<\/p>\n

So that\u2019s what the fellows do. They look at specific projects or programs, but they also are catalysts for students to realize that ethics are cool. We want students to know that it\u2019s neat to get involved in the ethics stuff because it will make them a better person and also a better employee when they are out in the workforce. Studies have shown that workers will experience an ethical issue or dilemma within the first 18 months on their job.<\/p>\n

This year at UCCS, we have amazing fellows. For the first time, we have a fellow from the library. Part of what the fellows do is present at roundtables attended by faculty members and staff from UCCS, Pikes Peak Community College, and the United States Air Force Academy. Fellows share what they have done or learned. In October, Carla Myers from the Kraemer Family Library presented a talk, \u201cCut and Paste,\u201d about the reuse of copyrighted material. That was an interesting topic for a lot of faculty.<\/p>\n

Our nine ethics champions from the Southern Colorado Higher Education Consortium come from different disciplines as well, including accounting, management, philosophy and nursing. Some faculty from those colleges and universities came to an event we had in April that focused on the future of drones. Three of the schools sent teams to compete in our UCCS business ethics case competition, with the ethics champion coaching the students.<\/p>\n

4. Along with business ethics, your research interests include corporate responsibility. What are you currently researching?\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n

One of the things I have found is that the more I do this, the more my research has dovetailed. In addition to corporate social responsibility, I\u2019m doing a lot on sustainable supply chains. Right now I\u2019m also working on an article about the ethics in the sharing economy. More and more I am being invited to be a panel member at conferences because a lot of my research is in the role of corporate social responsibility and stakeholder theory, which is about the responsibilities that corporations have to stakeholders and sustainability. We research what we care about.<\/p>\n

5. You\u2019ve mentioned that students have thanked you for your work. Is there one that you remember most?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The one that comes to mind happened when I was still in the business world. I used to do Junior Achievement, which goes back to the fact that I always feel we should be giving back. I have a framed quote from a kindergarten class in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The school was in the city and not a wealthy area. I remember a lot of the kids. I had to do the class in Spanish because they didn\u2019t speak English and it was winter and they didn\u2019t have coats. They gave me this framed quote, signed by each of them, and it\u2019s really cute. It says, \u201cIn a hundred years from now, it will not matter what my bank account was, the type of house I lived in or the kind of clothes I wore, but the world will be a much different place because I was important in the life of a child.\u201d That sums up why I do this. I want to make a difference.<\/p>\n

Members of the Southern Colorado Higher Education Consortium<\/strong><\/p>\n