Rock Ethics Institute

School administrators and food service directors face many challenges when trying to make ethical decisions about what meals to provide students through the National School Lunch Program. Considering menu items, the environment where the children eat, the time allowed for lunches, and more; the decisions are frequently made with little decision-making guidance and under tight regulatory, cost, and resource constraints.

The Rock Ethics Institute Ethical Decision-Making Among School Food Service Stakeholders Initiative seeks to understand the obstacles and challenges stakeholders face in making such decisions and to leverage this understanding to develop an ethical decision-making framework to guide such decisions for these stakeholders.

The project creates far-reaching research and pedagogical synergies by leveraging the expertise of Penn State’s Food Decisions Research Laboratory (which is directed by initiative convener Amit Sharma) and the REI’s Food Innovation, Ethics, Leadership, Development, and Sustainability (FIELDS) initiative, under the direction of co-convener Robert M. Chiles—providing deep, meaningful research opportunities for both Penn State undergraduate and graduate students.