Faculty and Staff

 

 



Eileen Amari-Vaught, RN, BSN, PhD

 

  • Bioethics

  • Ethics in Nursing

  • Curriculum Vitae

  • Contact Information
        4825 Troost
        Phone: (816)235-6334
        amarivaughte@umkc.edu

 

 

Eileen Amari-Vaught is a clinic nurse at UMKC and an adjunct professor in the department of Philosophy. She worked as a labor and delivery nurse at Truman Medical Center and is currently a clinical instructor in labor and delivery for the University of Kansas School of Nursing. In addition to her clinical work, she teaches courses in ethics, logic, and philosophy of women.

 

Dr. Amari-Vaught is a graduate of the University of Scranton and received her MA and PhD in philosophy, with a concentration in bioethics, from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Her most recent research focuses on ethical issues arising in family caregiver relationships.

 

 

 

 



Bruce Bubacz, PhD

  • Organizational Ethics

  • Ethics in Law and Government

  • Curriculum Vitae

  • Contact Information
       222 Cockefair Hall
       Phone: (816)235-2814
       Email: bubaczb@umkc.edu

 

Dr. Bubacz is University Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, and Professor of Philosophy and Law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC). He joined the faculty at UMKC in 1973 and served as Director of the College Honors Program, a program for academically talented undergraduates, from 1979 until 1985. He chaired the Philosophy Department from 1987 until 2000 and served as Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences between 2000 and 2002. Currently he chairs the Mathematics and Statistics Department.

Dr. Bubacz was instrumental in designing the Ethics in Management courses at the Henry W. Bloch School of Business and Public Administration and the undergraduate and graduate seminars in Ethics and Government in the College of Arts and Sciences. He also teaches a seminar in Philosophy and Law for third year law students at the UMKC School of Law.

Since 1992 Dr. Bubacz has presented the Ethics Block for the US Army’s Personnel Management for Executives Program (PME). PME is the capstone course for the Army’s Leadership Development Program administered by the Army Management Staff College. In addition to PME he also developed and presents the ethics-training component for the National Weather Service’s Executive Leadership Seminar. Dr. Bubacz is a frequent speaker for business, government and professional organizations.

Born in Chicago, Illinois, Dr. Bubacz attended public schools before enrolling at Ripon College, Ripon, Wisconsin. He graduated from Ripon with an honors BA in philosophy and earned an MA and PhD at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Currently, Dr. Bubacz’s interest is concentrated on ethical decision-making in stressful environments and on free speech theory. He regularly offers both graduate and undergraduate level courses on ethics and government and ethics and organizations.

In 1998 the Board of Curators of the University of Missouri named Dr. Bubacz a University of Missouri Distinguished Professor. He was the first faculty member to be so honored at UMKC.

 

 

 

 

 



Hank Frankel, PhD

  • Chairman, Department of Philosophy

  • Curriculum Vitae

  • Contact Information
       222 Cockefair Hall
       Phone: (816)235-2818
       Email: frankelh@umkc.edu

 

Henry Frankel works in history and philosophy of science. His major interest concerns evolution and resolution of scientific controversies. He has devoted considerable attention to the controversy in Earth sciences over the continental drift and plate tectonics. Frankel’s work has been supported by the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Publications have appeared in Nature, Philosophy of Science, EOS, and various journals in history of science including ISIS and Studies in History and Philosophy of Science. Frankel received an AB from Oberlin College (1966) and Ph.D. from Ohio State (1975). He began teaching at UMKC in 1971, and currently chairs the philosophy department.

 

 

 

 

 

 


Clancy Martin, PhD

  • Business Ethics

  • Curriculum Vitae

  • Contact Information
       222 Cockefair Hall
       Phone: (816)235-2817
       Email: martincw@umkc.edu

 

Dr. Martin is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at UMKC. He has published several leading books in applied and general ethics, including Above the Bottom Line, Morality and the Good Life, and (forthcoming from Oxford University Press) Honest Work. His many publications in philosophical journals include papers in Business Ethics Quarterly.

 

Dr. Martin comes to business ethics from a background in small business and entrepreneurship. During the 1990's, he raised the capital and then led development to transform a small jewelry store into one of Dallas-Fort Worth's leading luxury retail chains. He founded and developed a wholesale and retail jewelry manufacturing business, Quikset, which continues to flourish with five locations in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. He created, financed and then sold Cork, Dallas' first full-service wine bar, in the tony Turtle Creek area. In the late 90's he founded the Swest Acquisition Company, a private investment firm that developed and financed small to medium size business acquisitions in Texas (he did this in partnership with two of the financiers of the Whole Foods expansion).

 

Dr. Martin earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin in 2003. He wrote his dissertation under Robert C. Solomon, one of the world's leading business ethicists. Upon graduation, Clancy moved to UMKC to help establish the Center for Applied and Professional Ethics.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


James W. Sheppard, PhD

  • Environmental Ethics

  • Curriculum Vitae

  • Contact Information

  •    222 Cockefair Hall
       Phone: (816)235-2813
       Email: sheppardj@umkc.edu

 

 

James W. Sheppard, Ph.D. is an assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy, a participating faculty member of CAPE (Center for Applied and professional Ethics), and an affiliated faculty member of the Department of Environmental Studies and of the Department of Architecture, Urban Planning, and Design at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Sheppard is also a mayoral appointee serving as a city commissioner for Mayor Kay Barnes in Kansas City, Missouri on the Environmental Management Commission and serving as a city commissioner on the Mayor’s Commission on Race. For the Mayor’s Commission on Race, Sheppard serves as a co-chair of Subcommittee on Police Training.

 

Sheppard’s main research focuses on philosophy and public policy with an emphasis on environmental ethics, environmental politics, and environmental policy as well as urban politics, urban affairs, and urban policy. Sheppard is currently completing a book manuscript titled The Earth Beneath the Streets: People, Ecology,and the Promise of Urban Environmentalism (forthcoming 2005). This work bridges a number of disciplines and modes of thought and offers holistic framework for understanding how urban environmental issues and urban social issues exist within the same problem and solution frameworks. Sheppard uses a number of case studies to demonstrate how recognition of the overlapping nature of environmental and social issues can aid in the identification and eventual removal of some of the barriers that prevent progress in and on the behalf of urban environments and their inhabitants.

 

Sheppard’s research is fueled by a commitment to community. Over the past decade, he has worked to express this commitment through service as a member and/or as an ethics advisor to a number of organizations. Sheppard currently works with the not-for-profit organization Bridging the Gap as a board member and as a faculty member for environmental and business workshops held at Shadowcliff, their summer mountain retreat in Grand Lake, Colorado and he works with the Urban League of Greater Kansas City as a member of two think-tanks, one on economics, one on power. In addition, over the past three years Sheppard has worked with the Jackson County Department of Corrections, Missouri Department of Conservation, Brush Creek Community Partners, the Region 7 and 8 offices of The Environmental Protection Agency, and the All-Species Project on various projects including developing a program whose main aim is to encourage UMKC students to participate in various community-based learning and service project that are important to the future of the Kansas City Metropolitan Region.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Heidi Gay Updike

  • Administrative Assistant

  • Department of Philosophy

  • Contact Information

  •    222 Cockefair Hall
       Phone: (816)235-1331
       Email: updikeh@umkc.edu

 

 

Heidi Updike is the administrative assistant in the department of Philosophy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wayne Vaught, PhD

  • Bioethics, Medical Ethics

  • Curriculum Vitae

  • Contact Information
       222 Cockefair Hall
       Phone: (816)235-2815
       Email: vaughtw@umkc.edu

 

 

Dr. Vaught is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Medicine and Director of the Center for Applied and Professional Ethics. He came to UMKC in the Fall of 1998 and holds a joint appointment between the College of Arts and Sciences and the School of Medicine. He also serves as the Undergraduate Advisor in the Philosophy department.

 

His primary research focus is in the area of biomedical ethics, with an emphasis on ethical issues in pediatrics. He has published several papers in leading ethics journals including The Journal of Clinical Ethics and Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics.

 

Dr. Vaught has an active teaching role at UMKC. His responsibilities include teaching bioethics courses for undergraduate and medical students. In addition to classroom teaching, he has assisted in ethics education for health professionals at Truman Medical center, where he serves on the ethics committee. He crafted and implemented an ethics education program for ethics committee members at Truman and has been asked to provide the program for another ethics committee. In 2001, he was awarded the Alumni Good Teaching Award from the College of Arts and Sciences.

 

He received a bachelor’s degree in Philosophy, Psychology and Religion at Georgetown College, in Georgetown Kentucky. He earned an M.A. in philosophy at Baylor University and a Ph.D. in philosophy, with a concentration in Medical Ethics, from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville.

 

Wayne’s current research focus is on ethical issues in pediatrics.