The AI/AGI Grant for 2025/2026:  A grant of $5000 awarded to a faculty member or members to help increase expertise on AI and AGI-related issues. This research grant could support new research, but it might also be used to support work underway. Research proposals on, but not limited to, any of the following would be welcome:

ethical implications; copyright questions; privacy matters; pedagogical and professional uses; job displacement or creation; impact on trust and knowledge; validation and hallucinations; existential threats; and so on.

Faculty member(s) would be expected to report out on findings both through written work and through internal and external presentations. Scope to be determined.  Grant may be used for conferences, materials, and other avenues proposed by the applicant(s).

For inquiries and formal criteria contact Michael DeWilde at  dewildem@gvsu.edu or in Rm 1113 SCB.  Applications will be due July 9th, 2025. An independent panel of judges will evaluate the proposals and the grant will be awarded August 25th, 2025. The grant will be in effect for one year.

This case competition was designed to encourage GVSU students to develop and present projects that promoted clean energy. The clean energy sector is booming in Michigan, and yet there remains room for more innovation. The KBEI was pleased to recognize and reward the quality of the five student proposals. The winners, and the title of their projects, are:

The judges were Christina Keller, CEO of Cascade Engineering; Kelly Parker, Professor of Philosophy and Director, Environmental Studies Program, GVSU; and Yumiko Jakobcic, Director, Office of Sustainability Practices, GVSU.

The Business Ethics Center at Seidman became the Koeze Business Ethics Initiative (KBEI) in 2015, after a generous gift from the Koeze family (owners of the Koeze Company, a 110 year-old family business in Grand Rapids), made it possible for us to expand our capabilities and offerings.

Jeff Koeze, who has run Koeze Co. for close to 20 years, has a particular interest in social capital, and the ways in which social capital has defined, benefitted, and sustained Grand Rapids over the course of its history. 

Social capital has a variety of meanings, but there is some consensus that it is about the value of social networks (formal but even moreso informal), bonding similar people and bridging between diverse people, with norms of reciprocity. Members of a community with strong social capital tend to have more opportunities, be healthier and wealthier, and build and maintain civic institutions that are trustworthy.

Koeze sees the university (generically, but in this case specifically GVSU) as playing a central role in building social capital by exercising its convening power, its ability as a “neutral institution” to bring members of various communities together to hold and expand conversations critical to the success of that community. Koeze was a tenured professor of public health law at the University of North Carolina before coming back to GR to take the reins of the company, and while he appreciates research as much as the next academic, he thinks regional universities such as ours miss an essential element of their role if they overlook their responsibility to be of service to the local institutions that also figure in the social capital equation: local government, businesses, health care systems, K-12 schools, and so on. “When the KBEI – and Seidman – ask themselves what they can do to help ensure that the remarkable social capital that Grand Rapids enjoys endures and expands, then they are part of the virtuous circle that makes this place attractive; when that is ignored it has a negative impact community-wide.”

Besides its “convening power,” Jeff also supports the KBEI in the hope that we can “model for  students how to find stuff out for themselves.” A former English major, he argues that “managing primary material rather than secondary, pre-digested rework is critical to learning how to think through real problems. 

Ideally an education in the humanities and in business would be interwoven, if for no other reason than its singular ability to give students the capacity to distinguish between bad arguments and good ones, bad data and good data, and humane solutions and demoralizing ones.”

~ interviewed by KBEI director Michael DeWilde

KBEI is seeking an intern for the fall. If you know of anyone who may be interested in the position, please have them contact Michael DeWilde at dewildem@gvsu.edu.

The KBEI will continue to sponsor FLCs on Artificial Intelligence this coming academic year. Lunch provided. More information and dates forthcoming. 

Partnering with the Ford Presidential Foundation, the KBEI will co-sponsor an evening debate titled "Technocracy vs. Democracy," with prominent scholars. In December of 2025, exact date to be determined. 

Thank you for your continuous support for the Koeze Business Ethics Initiative. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact Michael DeWilde at dewildem@gvsu.edu.