2024-2025 Accomplishments
Ukleja Center For Ethical Leadership
2024-2025 Accomplishments
Designed as a university-wide interdisciplinary center of excellence and housed in the College of Business, the Ukleja Center for Ethical Leadership offers training to enhance the integration of ethics in everything we do. During its 20th year of operations, the center enthusiastically engaged students, faculty, and community leaders through programs and activities that embody its core values of integrity, servant leadership, excellence, and empowerment with Janey Roeder serving as Director.
Governing Council
The Governing Council actively engaged with the center’s programs by attending board meetings, hosting Student Leadership Institute sessions, and providing strategic direction and financial support. Under Mark Guillen’s leadership, board discussions focused on recognizing the center’s 20th anniversary and ensuring its sustainability, particularly with regard to human resources.
Nell and John Wooden Ethics in Leadership Award
Over 185 community leaders gathered for an intimate evening at The Modern to celebrate the presentation of the annual Nell and John Wooden Ethics in Leadership Award. The evening was full of positive energy with the 2024 award honoring Erin Garrity Rank, President & CEO of Habitat for Humanity of Greater Los Angeles, and the embodiment of servant leadership. Professor Libby Gustin shared the impact of the center’s Ethics Across the Curriculum program on students, and Mauli Gandhi shared the impact of the Student Leadership Institute program on her life. Many event sponsors hosted a student and/or professor at their tables, making for stimulating dinner conversations. CSULB Provost Karyn Scissum Gunn introduced our honoree and the event culminated with an inspirational message from Erin and presentation of her award by Mark Guillen and Greg Wooden, Nell and John’s grandson. In addition to serving its original purpose of “friend raising,” the event netted $69,000 for Ukleja Center programs (highest net earnings to date!).
Student Leadership Institute Class of 2025 at their fall leadership retreat ~ September 2024
Student Leadership Institute
With Celeste Ahl as their professor, 18 students participated in the two-semester Student Leadership Institute to explore ethical leadership issues related to business, education, healthcare, sports, and other professional fields. This course enables students to discover their core values and build a strong ethical foundation upon which future decisions can be made. Teamwork, community service, and networking with guest speakers are integral to the program. With local businesses hosting the class in their conference rooms, the course featured guest speakers from companies such as the Port of Long Beach, F&M Bank, Long Beach Medical Center, and Aquarium of the Pacific. The students designed a meaningful community service project by providing creative and engaging arts and crafts activities for women residing at the Long Beach Rescue Mission’s Lydia House.
Ethics at The Beach
Over 100 students attended the center’s annual Ethics at The Beachseminar, offered in partnership with the Student Center for Professional Development and the Associated Business Students Organization Council, this spring. Students had an opportunity to enhance their ethical leadership skills while exploring the seminar’s theme – Be True to You. Following Dr. James Sauceda’s poetic interactive exercise offering students an opportunity to explore their relationship to being their authentic self, students heard from three dynamic panelists – Amy Grat of Fulfillment Fund, Jeff Levine, President & CEO of Long Beach Rescue Mission, and praCh Ly, internationally acclaimed artist.
Over 125 campus and community leaders gathered at the Anna W. Ngai Alumni Center this spring to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Ukleja Center for Ethical Leadership. The event also served as a reunion for 80 of the center’s 365 Student Leadership Institute alumni. Other attendees included campus administrators and faculty, as well as Ukleja Center board members and Student Leadership Institute program site hosts and guest speakers.
Ethics Across the Curriculum Stipends
Advancing our vision of having an ethics module in every CSULB course, twenty-four $3,000 stipends were granted to faculty for integrating 3-hour ethics modules into their courses. The Ukleja Center has awarded over $585,000 in Ethics Across the Curriculum stipends since the program was initiated in 2005. The 2024-2025 proposal review committee, chaired by Danny Paskin (Journalism and Public Relations), selected these faculty stipend recipients:
- Max Alberhasky – Ethics in Marketing: The Relationship Between the Company and the Consumer (Marketing)
- Anna Bax – The Ethics of Language Access in an English-Dominant Society (Linguistics)
- Pavneet Kaur Bharaj – Integrating Ethics into Mathematics Education: A Pedagogical Proposal (Mathematics and Statistics)
- Daniel Herrera Cepero – Integrating Ethics and Postcolonial Perspectives in Peninsular Spanish Civilization Courses at CSULB (Romance, German, and Russian Languages and Literatures)
- Alice Choi – Ethics of Judges, Prosecutors, and Defense Attorneys (Criminology, Criminal Justice and Emergency Management)
- Tom Do – Multiliteracies: Toward an Ethical Approach to the Teaching of “Literacy” (English)
- Michelle Gibbs – Racializing the Folk: Ethical Implications of Early 20th Century Black American Modernist Playwrights’ Representations of Race and Religion (Theatre Arts)
- Sungjun Joe – The Impact of Irresponsible Gambling on College Students and the Importance of Ethics in the Curriculum(Family and Consumer Sciences – Hospitality Management)
- Moyang Li – The Ethics of Reading: Does Literature make us more Ethical? (English)
- Diana Librandi – How to Get Away with Murder in Ancient Greece (Classics)
- Madeleine Liseblad – From Journalists to Consumers: Understanding Ethics, Objectivity, Fairness, and Balance (Journalism and Public Relations)
- Roger Lo – Professional Ethics for Chemical Engineers (Chemical Engineering)
- Martin McCarthy – To Advance Environmental Law, Justice and Sustainability: Teach Environmental Ethics (Geography and Environmental Science and Policy)
- Mystyn Mills – Integrating Environmental Ethics into the Study of California’s Ecosystems (Geography and Environmental Science and Policy)
- Jonathan Pando Ocon – Decolonizing Open Science: Ethical Reasoning and Data Sovereignty in Remote Sensing(Geography)
- Blanca-Azucena Pacheco – Bioethics in Latinx Health (Chicano and Latino Studies)
- Chanwit Phengpis – Financial Analysts’ Stock Recommendations and Ethical Issues (Finance)
- Heather Rae-Espinoza – Integrating Ethics into Risk and Resilience (Human Development)
- Samiha Rahman – Ethical Qualitative Research with Historically Marginalized Student Groups and Communities (Human Development)
- Portia Resnick – Ethical Decision Making in Athletic Training: When Sports and Healthcare Intersect (Kinesiology)
- Rusty Rust – Fact, Fiction, and Fairness: The Ethics of Writing in a Misinformation Age (English)
- MyungHee Sohn – Ethical and Sustainable Practices in Fashion Product Development (Family and Consumer Sciences – Fashion Design)
- Lisa Star – Building an Ethical Foundation: Introducing Ethics for Civil Engineers and Construction Management Professionals (Civil Engineering and Construction Management)
- Melissa Wrapp – Ethnographic Witness: Ethics and the Representation of Structural Violence (Anthropology)
Faculty Ethics Research Stipends
To strengthen its research pillar, the Ukleja Center also offers $5,000 Faculty Ethics Research Stipendsto support original research and to contribute to the body of knowledge in disciplinary and interdisciplinary ethics. $120,000 has been awarded since this program began in 2013. The review committee, chaired by Maria Carpiac (Family and Consumer Sciences – Gerontology), selected these two research stipend recipients:
- Gary Hytrek – Nothing About Us Without Us: A Community-Centered Study of People with Disabilities in Long Beach(Geography)
- Sara Nourazari – Beyond the Algorithm: Navigating Ethical AI in Healthcare Operations (Health Care Management)
William Dickson Faculty Fellows
The William Dickson Faculty Fellowsprogram engages leaders from the corporate, government, and nonprofit sectors with CSULB faculty and students. This year’s cohort featured Jeff Levine, President & CEO of the Long Beach Rescue Mission, as its Leader-in-Residence. Through a series of classroom presentations, Jeff inspired students with the moving story of his transformational leadership journey. In addition to its Leader-in-Residence events, the center offered Faculty Fellows programs featuring internationally acclaimed artist and filmmaker praCh Ly and Nancy Luong, digital program manager at Salesforce. Through 25 campus presentations to over 940 students with majors as diverse as business, international relations, geography, cinematic arts, and sports psychology, our three Faculty Fellows actively engaged students by sharing real-life ethical leadership challenges they have experienced and how they resolved them.
The Ukleja Center’s 2024-2025 programs and services were made possible through the generous support of our local philanthropic community, particularly the Ukleja and Dickson families and our devoted Governing Council members. Our purpose – equipping people with the transformational power of ethical leadership – is truly a worthy and lifelong mission. The future has never been brighter for the Ukleja Center for Ethical Leadership with an abundance of opportunities to bring our mission to life!
