Dixie State University Business Ethics Forum

Dixie State University’s Udvar-Hazy School of Business will hosts its final noontime Business and Ethics Forum of the 2014-15 academic year on Thursday, April 16, featuring a presentation by DSU Professor Dr. Travis Seegmiller.
 
A native of St. George, Seegmiller graduated cum laude with a Bachelor’s of Arts from Yale University, and completed his Juris Doctor with cum laude honors at Georgetown University. During his professional career as a lawyer in Washington D.C., and as a Wall Street advisor, he provided legal and advisory services to a diverse array of domestic and international clients facing legal, business, financial and public policy strategy concerns in several business and governmental areas.
 
After getting married and starting a family, Seegmiller returned to St. George with his young family to live on the original Seegmiller Family Farm. He now teaches law and business at DSU, while continuing to provide advisory services for local and global clients.

The DSU Business and Ethics Forum is held every other Thursday throughout the fall and spring semesters, with each guest lecturer speaking on business matters in their respective professions and how ethics are introduced into the discussion. The Forum will resume its regular bi-monthly schedule for the 2015 fall semester beginning this September.

The bi-monthly forum, along with campus’ Institute for Business Integrity, was created by former DSU president Dr. Robert Huddleston in 2006, as a way to integrate ethics into the curriculum, and have it serve as a blueprint to ensure that students graduate with a set of ethical tools to help them get along in the professional world.

In 2006-07, Dixie State’s business program sought initial accreditation with the high profile Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB). In order to become accredited with the AACSB, ethics were required to be integrated into the college’s business curriculum. As a result, each business class on the DSU campus now includes an ethical component.

Dr. Huddleston noted that the business forums will give students – and current and prospective local business owners – an added dose of ethics training that is so sorely needed into today’s business world. His hope is that by the time students leave Dixie State, they have been exposed to enough ethical cases that, when they get out in the workforce, they will have the wherewithal and the intestinal fortitude to do the right thing, even when their job might be on the line. 

The Dixie State University Institute for Business Integrity is a partnership between the DSU Udvar-Hazy School of Business, the Small Business Development Center, the Washington County Economic Development Council, and the St. George Area Chamber of Commerce.