Melissa Fitzpatrick

Melissa is passionate about introducing students in business (and non-philosophy majors broadly) to the wonder and value of philosophy! She is an Assistant Professor of Ethics & Sustainability in the College of Business Administration. Melissa received her Ph.D. in philosophy from Boston College in 2019, just before starting her previous position as an Assistant Professor of the Practice in ethics (teaching Portico) in Boston College’s Carroll School of Management. Her role in the Carroll School was to introduce incoming students to philosophy as a lived practice, while guiding them toward an understanding of business as a force for good and vehicle for change. Melissa also advised the first-year students that she taught.

Prior to earning her doctorate, Melissa received an M.A. in philosophy from Loyola Marymount University, and a B.S. in communication from Boston University. She is the co-author of Radical Hospitality: From Thought to Action; chief among her research interests is understanding how to foster a more sustainable community with the other-than-human world, and, as a vital foundation for that, how to overcome instrumental values. Her work in normative ethics focuses on the intersection of post-Kantian Continental philosophy and contemporary virtue ethics, arguing for the significance of "self-disruption" in ethical development. She has also done integrated teaching, research, and community outreach in pre-college philosophy in the Mississippi Delta and on the Mexican-American border in El Paso, Texas.