Known for his innovative teaching, Terry Price has received a 2025 Outstanding Faculty Award from the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV). This award from SCHEV is the highest honor for faculty at Virginia's public and private colleges and universities, recognizing superior accomplishments in teaching, research, and public service.

“Terry has worked tirelessly to develop original, creative teaching and scholarship in the field of leadership ethics and to mentor faculty who have followed in this area,” said Sandra Peart, dean of the Jepson School. “Students and alumni describe discussions in his leadership ethics class as riveting, and many cite the class as the most significant of their undergraduate career.”

Price, the Coston Family Chair in Leadership and Ethics in the Jepson School, specializes in leadership ethics and moral psychology.

“Leadership ethics gave me a chance to think about old ethical problems in a new and fascinating context. My teaching, as well as my research, focuses on the question of whether ethics applies to leaders in the same way that it applies to everyone else,” he said.

Each semester, Price asks his students to share anonymously what they would do if they had a magical ring that could give them the power of invisibility and allow them to do whatever they want.

“The exercise, which draws from Plato’s The Republic, helps them reflect on their own moral motivation,” said Price. “Students come to see how easy it is to rationalize the use of power to pursue self-interest and, equally important, how easy it is to justify breaking the rules to achieve what they have convinced themselves would be the morally best outcome.”

Most of his classes are discussion-based, and he relies heavily on randomly calling on students to ensure everyone is included in the conversation.

“My view is that anyone, with the right kind of support, can be a philosopher,” he said. “But to improve as thinkers, reasoners, and arguers, students must have the freedom to practice and learn from mistakes.”

Price has taught at the University of Richmond since 1998. He helped launch the Jepson at Cambridge summer program, which focuses on law and leadership in an international context, and he co-directs the Jepson School's Gary L. McDowell Institute with Dan Palazzolo, professor of political science.

The McDowell Institute provides an intellectual space for students to think, reason, and argue productively with each other despite their political differences, he said. In the Student Fellows program, fellows read and discuss influential, contemporary, and often challenging texts. The authors later visit campus for a public lecture and seminar with the fellows.

“The McDowell Institute is important because of its explicit commitment to free and open discussion,” he said. “We owe it to our students to make sure they have the freedom to say what they think and to change their minds based on what others think and say.”

Price, who received his master of letters in politics at the University of Oxford before attaining his doctorate in philosophy at the University of Arizona, said he’s excited and honored to be a recipient of the SCHEV award.

Nominees are selected by their institutions, reviewed by a panel of peers, and chosen by a committee of leaders from the public and private sectors. Price was one of 12 recipients from across the state.

Price said he is grateful to the University for nominating and supporting him as a faculty member.

“I’ve gotten to work with truly excellent students at an institution where teaching matters just as much as producing cutting-edge research.”

All 2025 Outstanding Faculty Award winners will receive a $7,500 gift from Dominion Energy at an in-person ceremony in March.