BB&T Gift Supports Business Ethics Curriculum

A Duke University program that aims to enlighten undergraduates about the practical and moral issues they may face in the business world has received a $1 million grant from the BB&T Charitable Foundation.

The grant will be used to support teaching of business ethics, speakers and conferences, faculty and student grants, and research in the Program on Value and Ethics in the Marketplace (VEM). The program is part of the Markets & Management certificate program, Duke's interdisciplinary, liberal arts approach to undergraduate business study.

"As a mission-driven organization guided by our own clearly defined set of values, we're proud to support this worthwhile Duke University program," said BB&T Chairman and Chief Executive Officer John Allison. "In a rapidly changing and unpredictable world, individuals and organizations alike will benefit greatly from a core of fundamental, unchanging principles to guide their actions."

The BB&T Charitable Foundation, created by Winston-Salem-based BB&T Corp., made a gift of $500,000 to VEM in June 1999.

Gary Hull, a visiting instructor in sociology and director of VEM, said, "The grant is a wonderful example of corporate support for undergraduate education. Besides encouraging the development of courses on business ethics, it will support scholarly research on ethical issues and expose students to business practitioners, helping them understand the bridge between the classroom and the real world of industry."

VEM currently offers courses on the image of business in such works of literature as Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" and Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged," and on U.S. history from 1790 to 1850. Future courses include: ethics in management, an introduction to philosophy, 18th-century American intellectual history and the concept of rights in U.S. history.