2022 J.T. Barton, Jr. Memorial Ethics Award Recipients

1st Place: Eta Sigma Gamma

Eta Sigma Gamma (ESG) is a national health education honorary. The organization's purpose is to promote the discipline by elevating the standards, ideals, competence, and ethics of professionally prepared individuals in health education. As students who study public health, it is vital to understand ethics in healthcare as we will face ethical dilemmas almost daily. The award money will be used to hold an event to help explain and emphasize the importance of ethics within health education and beyond. A large majority of our members have a concentration in Pre-Professional Health Studies. By adding a component of promoting professional standards and ethics, we will help our members become more competitive applicants for graduate schools or jobs. In addition, ESG would want to focus not solely on the members of our organization but involve other professional organizations across campus. As more pre-professional graduate schools are shifting to including ethical decisions in the interview process, applicants need to fully understand and utilize the ethics framework. The event will better prepare our Clemson students to be stronger applicants applying to graduate schools.

2nd Place: Biosystems Engineering Club

We are a club committed to fostering stronger connections amongst current students, faculty, and alumni through professional development and service events. As a major that is highly interdisciplinary, we show our students our major can, in fact, help shape a healthier environment and community that fits their individual interests. 

The money awarded to us will fund a fast fashion themed ethics discussion panel. Approximately 40% of the money will go towards catering and the rest will go towards thank you gifts for our speakers. If there appears to be any money leftover, the club will use it to help decrease the cost of our ASABE Convention fees such that more students are able to attend.

3rd Place: CU REACH

CU-REACH, which stands for Clemson University Reaching for Equitable and Cultural Heights, is an organization that aims to bridge the gap between Clemson students and K-12 students in our local community. Clemson students offer tutoring, stem labs, mentorship, and presentations on global and local issues at Littlejohn Community Center. We consider our program to be a “double mentoring” program, because we believe that our mentors can learn just as much from the students they teach. CU-REACH emphasizes the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion and creates a safe space for students of all ages and backgrounds to have discussions regarding current events.

We are excited to use funding from the J.T. Barton, Jr. Memorial Award in order to purchase workshop materials for a professional development workshop that we will host for our K-12 students. Students will be able to be a “doctor for a day”, where they will learn about the paths of doctors from diverse backgrounds and have discussions about different barriers that they faced and how they overcame them. The students K-12 students will have the opportunity to learn how to take blood pressure, listen to heartbeats, etc. We hope that through this workshop we cultivate discussion and self esteem within the students we mentor and are thankful for the support from the Rutland Institute for Ethics!

Honorable mentions also receiving awards:

The Aurantiaco

The Aurantiaco is an annual print journal of critical writing on the humanities--including the study of philosophy and ethics--and social sciences authored by Clemson undergraduate students and edited, compiled, and published by a student-led publication team. The funding provided by the J.T. Barton Jr. Award will go towards the printing and publication of our inaugural issue in April 2022.

Creating Habits And Norms Guiding Ethical Decisions (CHANGE) Student Group

CHANGE seeks to inspire a culture of ethical behavior on campus through various events and activities with the Clemson student body. We plan to host a small panel to discuss Critical Race Theory and the debate surrounding it. The conversations about Critical Race Theory that are taking place around the nation have a lot of ethical implications, especially considering how the subject is being portrayed, or misportrayed by certain individuals. We seek to clear up these misconceptions while discussing the larger subject that is racism in America.

Erica Wearing

The money from this award will go towards classroom activities within a Small Animal Care course at a SC public High School (Indian Land). Students will have the opportunity to to discuss and advocate for the ethics surrounding animal rights, welfare and nutrition through this program.