ABOUT THE INSTITUTE: PEOPLE
Dr. Dennis Cooley, is the Director of the Northern Plains Ethics Institute and Professor of Philosophy and Ethics at North Dakota State University
Phone: (701) 231-7038
E-mail: dennis.cooley@ndsu.edu
Dr. Dennis Cooley is Professor of Philosophy and Ethics and Director of the Northern Plains Ethics Institute at NDSU. Cooley received Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Rochester in 1995. His teaching and research interests include theoretical and applied ethics with a focus on pragmatism, bioethics, business ethics, personhood, and death and dying. He is the author or editor of five books, including Technology, Transgenics, and a Practical Moral Code (Springer, 2009), Death’s Values and Obligations: A Pragmatic Framework (Springer, 2015), and co-edited Passing/Out: Identity Veiled and Revealed (Ashgate, 2012), and a number of professional ethics articles. Cooley is editor of Springer’s International Library of Bioethics, the NPEI’s Northern Plains Ethics Journal, and former Associate Editor of Elsevier France’s Ethics, Medicine and Public Health. His service to the profession also includes executive board membership on both the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics (APPE) and Humanities ND, as well as serving as co-chair of APPE’s Program Committee. Cooley is the former Secretary General of the International Academy of Medical Ethics and Public Health.
Cooley’s 26-year career in education, his profession, as NDSU philosophy program coordinator, and through collaborative, interdisciplinary outreach has taught him how to organize and manage large projects with many different stakeholders. Among former and current activities, Dr. Cooley, the NPEI, and its partner, the YWCA Cass Clay, are completing the Learning the Language of Diversity and Meaningful Inclusion: Moving from Hedgehog Thinking to Fox Engagement project, supported by internal and external grant funding. The project is successfully achieving its three components of a permanent race exhibit open to the public, a speaker series on racisms and the lived experience of marginalized populations, and a set of workshops training university and community members how to facilitate difficult conversations.
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Leann Wolf is the Associate Director of the Northern Plains Ethics Institute.
Leann Wolff founded Great Outcomes Consulting with Mike Slette in 2010. Having experienced first-hand the difference between a job and great work, Leann and Mike are passionate helping clients achieve better results by balancing purpose and people with profitability. Whether it’s clarifying what a business is really all about, establishing a vision for the future or creating a growth plan that engages employees and satisfies customers, Great Outcomes Consulting helps their clients achieve business success—and in way that builds their competitive advantage for the long-term. By taking a personalized approach to every interaction with clients, Leann tailors services to the unique needs of each organization. The focus is to ensure that each person connects with the business in a powerful, meaningful way.
Leann graduated from Concordia College, in Moorhead, Minn., and earned a Master of Arts degree from the University of St. Thomas, in St. Paul, Minn. Leann has spent more than 20 years working with some of today’s best-known companies and gathering proven, best practices from highly successful individuals. Throughout her career, she has built many high-functioning teams and facilitated hundreds of training, brainstorming and decision-making sessions with teams ranging in size from three to 100.
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NPEI Activities and Communication Coordinator
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Charles C. Okigbo
Charles Okigbo, PhD (Journalism), PhD (Ed. Leadership), is heading up activities in research, training, community service, and strategic communication at the NPEI, where he assists the Director and collaborates with the Advisory Board in planning and implementing programs in strategic planning, grant writing, and the broad areas of effective communication strategies. He has been professor of strategic communication in the Department of Communication at North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND, where he taught undergraduate and graduate courses in advertising, health communication, journalism, media research, public relations, and strategic communication research. He championed action research and programming on Native American Media Relations Training, Fundraising and Capital Campaigns, and Distributed Leadership Executive Education. His other academic interests are in mixed methods applications in studying social problems, explorations of framing in crisis reporting, and the wider applications of communication in national development. He was previously the Registrar of the Advertising Practitioners Council of Nigeria (APCON), the Executive Coordinator of the African Council for Communication Education (ACCE) Nairobi, Kenya, Temporary Advisor to the United Nations AIDS Control Agency (UNAIDS), and Vice President of ORBICOM, The Network of UNESCO Professors/Chairs of Communication (at Universite du Quebec, Montreal, Canada).
