Squatty Potty Founders to Address DSU Business Ethics Forum
Squatty Potty Founders to Address DSU Business Ethics Forum
Monday, March 16th, 2015
Dixie State University's Udvar-Hazy School of Business continues its noontime Business and Ethics Forum series for the 2015 spring semester on Thursday, March 19, featuring Bill and Judy Edwards, founders of Squatty Potty, LLC.
The Business and Ethics Forum is held in the Boeing Auditorium (Room 121) of the Udvar-Hazy Business Building. DSU students, faculty and staff, the entire Washington County business community, and the general public are all invited to attend. Admission is free.
The Edwards family will discuss the founding of their company and how a need to find a natural and inexpensive solution for a health problem turned into a multi-million dollar invention. Created in St. George in 2011, Squatty Potty started out as a small family business, which included Bill and Judy's son, Bobby. Soon the company began to gain national and worldwide attention, and has been featured on ABC-TV's "Shark Tank" last fall, and on "The Dr. Oz Show," along with several other television and radio appearances.
The series will continue April 2, featuring Vice President and CFO of Deseret Power Electric Cooperative Bob Dalley, and DSU business law and economics professor Travis Seegmiller will wrap up the semester schedule with a presentation April 16.
The DSU Business and Ethics Forum is held every other Thursday throughout the fall and spring semesters, with each guest lecturer speaking on business matters in their respective professions and how ethics are introduced into the discussion.
The bi-monthly forum, along with campus' Institute for Business Integrity, was created by former DSU president Dr. Robert Huddleston in 2006, as a way to integrate ethics into the curriculum, and have it serve as a blueprint to ensure that students graduate with a set of ethical tools to help them get along in the professional world.
In 2006-07, Dixie State's business program sought initial accreditation with the high profile Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB). In order to become accredited with the AACSB, ethics were required to be integrated into the college's business curriculum. As a result, each business class on the DSU campus now includes an ethical component.
Dr. Huddleston noted that the business forums will give students – and current and prospective local business owners – an added dose of ethics training that is so sorely needed into today's business world. His hope is that by the time students leave Dixie State, they have been exposed to enough ethical cases that, when they get out in the workforce, they will have the wherewithal and the intestinal fortitude to do the right thing, even when their job might be on the line.
The Dixie State University Institute for Business Integrity is a partnership between the DSU Udvar-Hazy School of Business, the Small Business Development Center, the Washington County Economic Development Council, and the St. George Area Chamber of Commerce.
For questions regarding the DSU Institute for Business Integrity forums, contact Dr. Huddleston at huddleston@utahtech.edu or 435-652-7740.
