For the third consecutive year, the UCF Ethics Bowl team has qualified for the National Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl. Two teams of UCF students competed against twenty competitors from 15 schools in the Mid-Atlantic Regional Ethics Bowl, held at the University of North Georgia on Saturday, November 16. One of UCF’s teams placed third, besting teams from Clemson, University of North Carolina, and Georgia State, while UCF’s second team placed ninth overall.
The top three teams qualify for the national competition and UCF’s performance has secured entry into the national competition. Other teams that have qualified for the national competition include Ole Miss and Samford University. The National Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl will be held in Atlanta, GA on February 23-24, 2020.
The students who participated in the event were Fiona Barry, Sara Branly, Maya Garcia-Hector, Natalie Hintz, Rachel Leete, Bradley Park, Saar Peles, and Madison Stemples. The team is coached by Dr. Michael Strawser (Chair, Philosophy Department), Dr. Madi Dogariu (Assistant Dean, Burnett Honors College), and Dr. Nancy Stanlick (Associate Dean, College of Arts and Humanities).
“We are very proud of this success and all the efforts of the students,” noted Strawser.
The UCF Ethics Bowl team has been competing regionally since 2004 and nationally since 2009. Teams compete by arguing for ethical positions on a range of complex social, political, and medical issues relevant to our world today, with an end goal of learning from both one’s own team and from the competing teams and judges. The UCF Ethics Bowl team won the national Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl in 2011 and the Mid-Atlantic Regional Ethics Bowl in 2017.