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Liberal Arts and Professional Studies – Certificate in Professional Ethics

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Department of Philosophy

Ethical issues are becoming increasingly central to almost all areas of professional and public life. As work becomes faster, more technologically and bureaucratically complex and ever more economically productive, ethical issues increase in difficulty and seriousness. As a result, the demand for people with qualifications in professional ethics is growing in all sectors. The department’s especially large range of courses in the area of professional ethics concentrates on real situations and case studies. By taking a number of these courses, students encounter many different concrete ethical issues and learn a variety of perspectives and methodologies for dealing with them. The department’s style of professional ethics recognizes the diversity of values, traditions and points of view that are brought to bear today on actual current ethical problems. Nonetheless, these courses constantly attempt to integrate this situational approach by means of a search for generally applicable methodologies and ways of theorizing such issues. The certificate therefore gives students a wide range of experience and methodologies for understanding institutional practices that deal with ethical issues in the public and private sectors. They develop capacities to flexibly adapt this knowledge to different institutions and unforeseen ethical problems in such areas as education, business, health, media, government, law, social work, politics and personal life. Because the resolution of concrete ethical issues needs a creative response to the particularities of unforeseen situations, practice on cases in a number of different institutions and professions helps one to prepare for dealing with problems in one's own.

The Certificate in Professional Ethics is based in the Department of Philosophy. It is a direct entry program that is available to any students admitted to the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies or the University.

Graduating with a certificate: except where otherwise stated, a minimum cumulative grade point average of 4.00 is required to satisfy certificate requirements. Students must also submit application to graduate from a certificate program. Applications should be obtained from and filed with the unit administering the certificate program. Transcript notation that the requirements for a certificate have been completed will be made once the Registrar’s Office has received notice from the unit administering the program. Certificates will not be conferred until candidates have successfully completed an undergraduate degree program if they are simultaneously enrolled in a degree and a certificate program. The Faculty does not award certificates retroactively. Refer to the Academic Standards section for details of the undergraduate certificate minimum standards.

Students wishing to enrol or make inquiries should contact the Department of Philosophy, S428 Ross Building, Tel.: 416-736-5113, Fax: 416-736-5114.

Requirements: 24 credits including:

a) Core requirements:

b) Elective requirements:

  • 18 credits chosen from either List A or List B, but with no more than three credits from List B. 12 of these 18 credits must be at the 3000 level or above.

List A:

List B:

*Available as Internet courses.

Note: students who wish to complete both the Certificate in Professional Ethics and the Certificate in Practical Ethics may not count the same courses for both certificates. If the Certificate in Practical Ethics is completed first, then any additional courses must be chosen from List A of the Certificate in Professional Ethics. If the Certificate in Professional Ethics is finished first, then additional courses will be chosen for the Certificate in Practical Ethics in consultation with the student’s certificate adviser.

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