Centers of Excellence - The American College

In June 2011, the Center for Ethics in Financial Services named Julie A. Ragatz asits new Director. Ragatz joined the Center in 2006 as a doctoral fellow and wasappointed the Associate Director in 2010. She is currently finishing her Ph.D. inPhilosophy at Temple University, where she specializes in ethical theory and focusesspecifically on ethical issues in the financial services industry. In September 2011the College hired Assistant Director, Elizabeth Rohr, CLU ® , ChFC ® , who previouslyworked as marketing director at First Keystone Bank, in addition to positions atAIG, Vanguard and Reliance Standard Life.James A. Mitchell, CLU ® , ChFC ®The Center for Ethics continued to hold several eventslast year, beginning in January with the 11 th Annual JamesA. and Linda R. Mitchell Forum on Ethical Leadership inFinancial Services. The forum’s purpose is two-fold—to allowfinancial services executives to reflect on ethical issuesthey confront on a regular basis with questions posed tothem by academics engaged in business ethics education,and to engage academics in conversation with senior levelexecutives so they can bring the real-world experiencesdiscussed back to their classrooms.In addition to the Mitchell Forum, the Center hosted itssemi-annual “members only” corporate retreats, a foundingindustry fellow “members only” retreat held in November,and the second annual Cary M. Maguire Ethics Lecturewhich took place in June. The lecture is a forum for sharingthe work and insights of the Cary M. Maguire Fellow at TheAmerican College, Dr. Anthony H. Catanach, Jr. The 2011lecture by Dr. Catanach was titled “Combating the CheatingCulture: An Accounting Moral Compass.”Other Ethics Center 2011 activities included developinga new Course, CE 110, “Ethical Issues When Dealing withElderly Clients,” upgrading the Center’s website, launchingthe first edition of the Center’s newsletter, and publishing aninaugural column by Ragatz in the September issue of BrokerWorld magazine. In addition, Ragatz was featured in an articlein the November Issue of Financial Planning magazine,which highlighted how the Center’s courses teach financialplanners to make ethical decisions in the workplace.The Center launched a new content management systemand video player, Limelight, to further improve the website’sstreaming capabilities and to offer customized playersfor training courses and other educational programs.Another recent addition to the website is a series ofseminars providing in-depth discussions on topics such assaving for retirement, reverse mortgages, annuities in theretirement income plan, and retirement income strategies.Co-directed by David A. Littell, JD, ChFC ® , CFP ® , andKenn Beam Tacchino, JD, LLM, the Retirement Centerlaunched the first edition of its newsletter, “The Bulletin,”in August 2011. The newsletter updates subscribers oncurrent retirement issues, news articles of interest, andrecent video content.Most recently, the Center has been developing a newretirement planning designation, which is discussedin-depth on page 3 within the feature articleon designations.7