Mission:     The Williams Institute for Ethics and Management (TWI) seeks to assist in an educational experience that raises awareness and importance of ethics in the present and future for high school students.

 

Goals:

Ø      Influence as many students as possible with a meaningful educational experience.

Ø      Encourage participation from all socioeconomic academic achievement levels.

Ø      Develop a partnership relationship with individual schools.

 

In 1995, TWI started the ethics essay contest with one high school.

 

Over the past 14 years:

Ø      17,000 total students have participated.

Ø      $75,000 in scholarships has been awarded.

 

In 2008 TWI partnered with ten high schools.

Ø       2,400 students participated.

Ø       $10,500 in scholarships was awarded to 21 students ($500 each).

Ø      $2,100 in teacher honoraria was awarded to 21 teachers.

 

TWI partners with each school:

Ø      TWI works closely with each school interested in participating to enlist their active involvement.

Ø      At each school 1,000 to 1,600 contest announcements are distributed.

Ø      TWI receives approximately 250 to 400 essays from each participating school.

Ø      Teachers build the essay contest into their curriculum requiring a significant percentage of students from each partner school to participate. Teachers use the essay as a graded assignment, as a participation grade or as an extra credit grade.

Ø      Each school has a separate junior and senior level contest.

Ø      Each school is awarded two $500 scholarships—to one junior and one senior.

Ø      Each teacher of each winning student is awarded an honorarium of $100 to be used for the purchase of ethics-related materials for their classrooms.

Ø      Scholarships are presented at the students’ end-of-the-year awards ceremonies.

 

Essay evaluation process:

The student essays go through a three step evaluation process.

1.      Qualified professional evaluators perform the initial evaluation narrowing the field to the top 15 for each grade level at each school.

2.      The semi-finalist essays are then evaluated involving separate five-member teams of volunteer community leaders for each grade level to read and rank order 15 essays.

3.      Three finalists from each grade level at each school are selected, and each of the finalists is individually interviewed to verify and confirm the winner.