Running head: DEPAUL UNIVERSITY VISIT

Title: Reflective Paper on the DePaul University Visit

Name: Helen Michelle Winton
Name of College: International College of the Cayman Islands
Class Name: BE/SO-425- Seminar on Business and Society
Instructors Name: Dr. David Marshall

DEPAUL UNIVERSITY VISIT

On Thursday the 19th of May 2016, the seminar class of ICCI visited DePaul University,
this was our first visit. Dean Marisa Alicea gave an introduction of the college. DePaul
University was founded in 1972; it is one of the 10 colleges in Chicago. It has over 23,000
students who attend this college. The college caters to the mature students, which ranges from
ages 24 years or age and up. She further, went on to say students have to wait until they are 24
years old to apply. However, there was one individual who was accepted before the age of 24 (as
she had a chronic illness), Seventy percent of the students attend part-time and 90 percent work
full time and attend college. Students who enrol at DePaul have to demonstrate fifty
competencies areas (12 Lifelong Learning Area, 26 Liberal Learning Area and 12 Focus Area) in
order to complete their degree. DePaul oldest person to graduate was 84 years of age.
The next presenter for DePaul University was Summer Brown; she is the Executive Director
of Institute for Business and Professional Ethics. She presented on the topic of Ethics in the
World of Business, she spoke on topics such as, Civil Rights Issues, Environmental Issues,
Discrimination, and Harassment, which are some of the issues faced with the Business and
professional world. Summer went on to touch on the ways to address the issues at hand, some of
these issues cause tension to arise between employers and employees as the power of the
employer sometimes play a factor in these issues. She also mentioned, For businesses to operate
successfully is to be ethical. She further went on to elaborate on the newly type of companies
form called Benefit Corporations. This was the first time, I had ever heard of this type of
company.
We had a guest speaker at the university called Dr. Daryl Koehn who is the Wicklander Chair
in Professional Ethics presented on the topic of Whistleblowing. We were given an assignment
on a scenario we had to come up with on a case study, we all had to put on our thinking caps and

DEPAUL UNIVERSITY VISIT

come up with solutions. Dr.Koehn made mention of the majority of whistle-blowers are either
fired or quit their jobs as they are not comfortable once this takes place.
The information presented by Dr. Daryl Koehn related to Whistle-Blowing in the workplace
on Chapter 16 which makes mentioned of rights to speak free and what employees also
encounter within the process of whistle-blowing. Lawrence and Weber (2014) refer to whistleblowing as there may be situations in which societys interest override those of the company, so
an employee may feel an obligation to speak out. When an employee believes his or her
employer has done something wrong or harmful to the public, and he and she report alleged
organizational misconduct to the media, government or high-level company officials. (p.370)
This scenario relates to the business and society topic and whistle-blowing can affect corporate
entities.
The implications in this particular area to Cayman would be the whistle-blowing which also
takes places in Cayman. Lately, there seem to be many fraud and corruption cases in Cayman,
with some of Cayman most prominent member of society, whom with the scenario of whistleblowing has led to the convictions of these individuals. Therefore, I would have to say there are
some similarities in Cayman to the United States.
To conclude, despite there are several successful cases, but the majority has led to individuals
being fired and forced to quit. We have to do the right thing and by following the proper protocol
and channels, we can lead to a lot more convictions for these types of crimes.

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Reference
Lawrence, A. & Weber, J., (2014). Business and society: Stakeholders, ethics, public policy
(14th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill