Our Vocational Service Team hosted two workshops in March. One was for MNCAPS business track students with approximately 63 students and 2 faculty in attendance. The Team hosted the same workshop for 29 Bridges Area Learning Center students. Dr. Jason Skirry, Professor at the University of St. Thomas, was again our facilitator for these workshops. The workshops historically have focused on three main areas affecting our ability as humans to process and make sound ethical decisions. Those focus areas include character building, why good people make bad decisions, and how to properly analyze and evaluate situations when an ethical dilemma is present. This year, due to lack of time, the workshop focused more on the later two areas. To approach and better understand why good people make bad decisions, Dr. Skirry used group discussion and interactive games to demonstrate the natural biases and heuristics that exist within all humans. The games showed us how those biases can create problems all along our natural decision-making process. Using practical application via case studies (real world workplace issues), Dr. Skirry then introduced a framework that when used properly can help identify issues, evaluate options, and fully analyze ethical situations. The workshop provides opportunities for students to practice using ethical language to communicate thier thought processes and decisions to complex problems that they could face in the workplace. The skills learned and practiced in this workshop will be used throughout students' lives.

