With the goal of fostering ongoing discussion in a field of inquiry he valued, Carrol O. Buttrill ’38 established a fund that enables the Melbern G. Glasscock Center for Humanities research to support a regular series of annual events and programs in ethics. The Carrol O. Buttrill ’38 Endowed Fund for Ethics promotes investigations of ethical questions of significance to Texas A&M and beyond by engaging faculty and students in on-going discussion through lectures, roundtables, special events, and course activities. 

The Buttrill Fund’s Planning Committee set in motion the current year’s investigation into ethics in intercollegiate sports with a lecture by Dr. Jan Boxill, Director of the Parr Center for Ethics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill entitled “Sport as a Public Forum for Ethics.” The discussion generated by Dr. Boxill’s lecture continued in the spring of 2008 with a roundtable on “Ethics, Money, and Intercollegiate Sport.”  In addition to these thematically related, public events, the Buttrill Fund supports undergraduate research in ethics through the initiatives of Professor Scott Austin in the Department of Philosophy.  Dr. Austin, faculty advisor to the Philosophy Club, undertook a semester-long investigation of the ethical issues raised by the College of Liberal Arts’ “Common Ground” text, Cathy Small’s My Freshman Year.