My last visit to the Muskegon Correctional Institution has long stayed with me. I met with a group of inmates whose passion and hunger for reading and discourse energized me. Their respect and admiration for Michael DeWilde was so evident. Michael's work is extraordinary, if for no other reason than that he has ventured into an otherwise bleak corner of America and engaged its tenants, poked and prodded them to question their preconceptions, pushing them to explore worlds well removed from their own.
Michael DeWilde
office: (616) 331-3612
dewildem@gvsu.edu
Professor Michael DeWilde of the Philosophy Department, who has overall responsibility for the program, teaches Moral Philosophy, Political Philosophy, Religion, and Film courses in the prison as well as running the GVSU seminar. In addition to being Associate Professor of Philosophy, he is also the Director of the Business Ethics Center at the Seidman College of Business. He earned an M.T.S. at Harvard University and a B.A. in Philosophy from Williams James College at Grand Valley State University. He is a regular speaker at conferences, the recipient of a major grant from the Kellogg Foundation, winner of a 2007 Pew "Teaching Excellence" award and is currently writing a book about the value of liberal arts in business. His work has been featured in the New York Times, Inc. Magazine, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and the Grand Rapids Press, among other places. For many years, he has consulted with West Michigan businesses around issues of values clarification, conflict resolution, and change management.