University students who applied for fellowship programs and research grants sponsored by the University’s Center for Ethics in Public Life this year were expecting to be granted or denied their request.

Instead, they received an e-mail that said due to recent state government budget cuts, the University has decided to close the center entirely.

University spokesman Rick Fitzgerald said due to budget constraints determined by state funding, certain University programs including the Center for Ethics in Public Life were eliminated. He said the center is not closing because it failed to promote its message, but because it had already met its goals.

“The evaluation was that its mission of ethics in public life was now sort of embedded in the community,” Fitzgerald said. “And the provost’s office believed that would be sustained without having a specific center focused on that.”

The center was founded on July 1, 2008 in response to perceived ethical lapses in public life nationwide. Three years before it became an official establishment, it was a presidential initiative by University President Mary Sue Coleman.

At the time, Coleman cited violations of public ethics, such as the mistreatment of prisoners in Iraq, sexual abuse by priests and government corruption, as impetus for the creation of the center. Coleman asked a University task force to work toward a solution that would promote ethics in academia and encourage a public discourse on ethics.

Once the center was founded, it created a forum for applied ethics by linking the specific schools and areas of study at the University that focus on ethics, according to John Chamberlin, the center’s director and a professor in the Ford School of Public Policy.

Though ethics-based programs existed on campus before the creation of the center, the study of ethics had not been directly connected to the notion of applied ethics, Chamberlin said. In addition to sponsoring courses on the topic, the center also served individual students, student groups and administrative bodies interested in sponsoring events or projects related to ethics through program grants.

According to Chamberlin, many other universities and academic institutions were motivated to establish centers as a result of current events.

“They probably were spurred by the headlines,” he said, citing centers that were founded after historical crises such as Watergate and debates about World War II.

Chamberlin said many ethics centers focus on specific topics like business, environmental or military ethics or cater solely to graduate students and faculty members. The University’s center was one of a few that extended its reach to undergraduate students and encompassed many disciplines, he said.

LSA Associate Dean Derek Collins, a member of the center’s executive board, said he believes the center has accomplished much since its inception. Collins added that he thinks the University’s budget constraints have no bearing on the success of the center and that the center’s closure does not reflect its effectiveness as a program.

“Chamberlin’s leadership has been exemplary,” Collins said. “We’ve done great things over the last five years, and no one should regret all the great work that we’ve all done.”

Though the center is closing, Chamberlin said he doesn’t think the services it offers will disappear.