Summary
The Center for Business and Applied Ethics will promote research, teaching, and outreach in all areas of business and applied ethics at SUNY Poly. The Center’s activities will include faculty, students, and practitioners at SUNY Poly and other institutions in New York, such as colleges, high schools, businesses, non-profits, and government agencies. Within SUNY Poly’s AACSB-accredited College of Business, the Center will serve as an initiative that will have a positive societal impact on the Mohawk Valley and beyond. The Center will support three primary sets of activities: 1) public lecture series, 2) conferences, and 3) an ethics case competition, along with other educational opportunities for students.
Research Professionals
Jim Staihar
PI
Jim Staihar is an Assistant Professor of Business Ethics in the College of Business at the SUNY Polytechnic Institute (SUNY Poly) in Utica, New York. He is also serving as the Chair of the Management Department at SUNY Poly. Previously, he served as the inaugural Fishlinger Family Endowed Scholar at the University of Maryland's Center for the Study of Business Ethics, Regulation, and Crime. He also worked as an Assistant Professor in the Accounting and Information Assurance Department at the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business. Before joining the faculty at Maryland, he served as a Law and Public Affairs Fellow at Princeton University and a Law and Philosophy Fellow at the University of Chicago Law School. In addition, he earned a Ph.D. in Philosophy at the University of Michigan and a J.D. from Harvard Law School.
His service to the University of Maryland included acting as a founding member and Associate Director of the Center for the Study of Business Ethics, Regulation, and Crime (C-BERC). In support of C-BERC, he arranged public lectures and panels, including both academics and practitioners as speakers. He assisted in efforts to create a professional graduate certificate program in the area of risk, compliance, and the law. In addition, he helped obtain significant funding for C-BERC from a private donor, and he facilitated a relationship between C-BERC and a large defense contractor.
His research to date has focused on issues in business law, business ethics, accounting ethics, and criminal law theory. He has published papers in The Journal of Philosophy, the Iowa Law Review, Law and Philosophy, the New Criminal Law Review, the Buffalo Public Interest Law Journal, the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Business Law, the Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics & Public Policy, and the Journal of Law, Business & Ethics.
At both Maryland and SUNY Poly, he has regularly taught business ethics courses with a strong emphasis on active learning exercises. At SUNY Poly, he also teaches an MBA course on business law and an introduction to business class that is required of all business majors. During the Spring 2021, he taught a corporate finance course that is also required of all business majors. He also has experience teaching courses on issues of ethics and law at the University of Michigan and the University of Chicago Law School.
Rafael Romero
Co-PI and Collaborator
Dr. Romero is serving as the Interim Dean of the College of Business at SUNY Poly. He is also an Associate Professor of Finance at SUNY Poly.
Matthew Brigida
Co-PI and Collaborator
Dr. Brigida is an Associate Professor of Finance in the College of Business at SUNY Poly. He is also serving as the Chair of the Accounting and Finance Department at SUNY Poly.
