Columbia College Honors student Diana Lynde has been chosen to attend DePauw University's The Janet Prindle Institute for Ethics to present her submission "The Curious Case of the Conversational Absolutist." Each year, The Prindle Institute chooses only thirty undergraduate students from across the country to come to their campus, located in Greencastle, Indiana, and take part in panel discussions on ethics with fellow students and professors of ethics. The Prindle Institute awards a stipend, which includes room, board, and partial airfare; the Division of Behavioral Sciences and Human Inquiry at Columbia College will sponsor Lynde to cover her remaining airfare expenses.

Lynde, currently a junior, is a particularly distinguished Honors Program student, who has made presentations on the power of reflective learning at the national convention of the Association of American Colleges and Universities, as well as on a variety of teaching and learning topics at two National Collegiate Honors Council conferences. She is majoring in communication with a double minor in business administration and philosophy. Recently, Lynde won a prestigious South Carolina Independent Colleges and Universities (SCICU) Collaborative Research Grant to conduct research in Germany on the topic of gender, philosophy, and the academic market place. Dr. Heather Matthusen, assistant professor of philosophy at the College, has served as Lynde’s advisor on both the ethics submission and the SCICU grant.

The Janet Prindle Institute for Ethics promotes critical reflection and constructive debate about the most important ethical questions: What is right, just, and good, and what must human beings do—now and in the future—to meet their moral responsibilities? The Institute seeks to explore with DePauw University students and visiting scholars the moral challenges of the 21st Century and encourage them not to remain silent in the face of injustice.