Our team was founded in 2022 by Charles Anderson, Justin Bowen, Arvyn De, Maya Mathur, and Andrew Dowdy, who was at one point the president of the Georgia Tech Debate Team. The team was initially coached by Dr. Sherri Conklin, who is now an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Washington State University. The School of Public Policy and the Ethics, Technology, and Human Interaction Center (ETHICx) at Georgia Tech were (and still are) amazing partners in both expertise and funding that helped take our members from an eager set of students to a competitive team.
In our first year, the team competed in the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics’s Mid-Atlantic Regional Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl, although unfortunately did not qualify for the national competition. Instead, the team went to compete in the National Bioethics Bowl which was then held at Northeastern University, placing At this point, our team also began competing in the LM Ethics in Engineering Case Competition, which was our first time competing in a non-ethics bowl ethics competition format.
Our first major accomplishment as a team was in the fall of 2023, where we placed third at the Association of Practical and Professional Ethics’s (APPE) Mid-Atlantic Regional Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl, thus qualifying us for APPE’s Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl National Competition. After months of preparation, our team went on to compete in the national and made it out of preliminary rounds to place in quarterfinals.
The following year in the fall of 2024, our team again competed in the APPE Mid-Atlantic Regional, this time placing first in the competition with a 6-0 record. Notably, the team resoundingly defeated the University of North Carolina, who placed first in the national competition the year prior. That spring we went on to compete in the APPE National Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl where we placed 10th overall. Additionally, we competed in the Ethics in Engineering Case Competition as well as the Society for American Archaeology’s Archeology Ethics Bowl.
As of now, the Georgia Tech Ethics Bowl team is preparing to host an Ethics Bowl high school invitational themed around technology, ethics, and human society. The team is expanding its aims of ethics education, and with the funding of partners and the support of our current faculty advisor, Dr. Robert Kirkman, we are hoping to grow in size and become an even more competitive team.