Opportunities
Upcoming APPE mini-conference: Engineering towards a More Just and Sustainable World
The meeting of the Association of Practical and Professional Ethics (APPE) will take place in early March 2010 in Cincinnati Ohio. A workshop on “Engineering towards a More Just and Sustainable World” is scheduled at the end of the meeting on March 6-7, 2010.
The workshop on engineering, justice, and sustainability grows out of an earlier workshop sponsored by the NAE and APPE and funded by NSF (grant SES-0750007). That workshop focused on conflicts among positive goals that can arise when engineers are operating in contexts of social and environmental upheaval. It turned out that the question of engineering and social justice was a hotly contested topic at the meeting, while humanitarianism and engineering, or engineering and social responsibility was not. Some engineers did not think social justice (whatever it was) was an appropriate issue for engineering practice or for consideration in their societies; others disagreed. The topic of environmental justice was barely touched on. The mini-conference at APPE will focus on these latter issues, asking whether and how engineers, their professional societies, and the organizations in which they work can contribute to realizing goals of social and environmental justice.
The annual meeting of the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics begins on Thursday, March 4, 2010 at the historical Hilton Cincinnati Netherland Plaza in Cincinnati, Ohio. There will be a registration fee of $70 for “Engineering towards a More Just and Sustainable World,” with a reduced fee for registrants for the Association’s annual meeting; see www.indiana.edu/~appe/.
Workshop: NSF and Ethics Education in Science and Engineering
AAAS Annual Meeting, San Diego, February 19, 2010
Professional Development Workshop:
NSF and Ethics Education in Science and Engineering
You can find relevant information by visiting the AAAS conference website.
Synopsis:
The America COMPETES Act of 2007 requires research and education proposals to the National Science Foundation (NSF) to present plans for “appropriate training and oversight in the responsible and ethical conduct of research” for all students and postdoctoral researchers participating in the projects. It also requires that proposals describe their mentoring activities for postdoctoral researchers and notifies investigators that these activities will be “evaluated under the Foundation’s broader impacts merit review criterion”. While NSF has always encouraged ethical conduct of research, the Act makes this a requirement and challenges NSF and the constituencies applying for support to demonstrate meaningful programs in research ethics. In the Federal Register of February 26, 2009, NSF requested public comment on its plans to require institutions to certify their plans to provide this training and their responsibility to verify it. NSF also indicated its intention to sponsor a competition for “development of an online digital library containing research findings, pedagogical materials, and promising practices regarding the ethical and responsible conduct of research in science and engineering.” This session will explore ways and resources with which to address these requirements, from the perspectives of developers of digital resources, university faculty and administrators responding to these requirements, postdoctoral fellows affected by them, and NSF itself.
Audience Interest Statement:
Many AAAS Annual Meeting attendees apply to NSF for support and would like to hear about programs that satisfy NSF requirements and prove successful in gaining university approval and support, and NSF support as well. That includes investigators at all career stages, administrators, and post-doctoral fellows and graduate students. The moderator and speakers have been selected to cover a broad spectrum of fields and levels in academia. They include a professor of political science who examines the role of digital resources in government and has an award from NSF to establish a “beta” site of resources for ethics education, an early-career scientist (astronomy, physics) who directed the National Post-Doctoral Association’s research ethics program, and a faculty member/dean (biology, MD) who has developed successful research ethics activities in different settings. The moderator, in the NSF policy office, has been responsible for developing these NSF requirements. Workshop presentations will be short, and the audience will be solicited to provide examples of problems, successful approaches and programs, and best practices in initiating, implementing, and evaluating ethics activities. The new publication from the National Academies Press, “Ethics Education and Scientific and Engineering Research: What Has Been Learned? What Should Be Done? will be distributed to attendees.
Disciplinary Sections Consulted:
Societal Impacts of Science and Engineering (X)
Organizer
Rachelle D. Hollander
Director, Center for Engineering, Ethics, and Society (CEES)
National Academy of Engineering
Washington, DC 20001
Phone Number: 410-235-4309
Email: rhollander@nae.edu
Moderator
Michael E. Gorman
Program Director, Science, Technology & Society
National Science Foundation
Division of Social and Economic Sciences
4201 Wilson Blvd., Suite 995
Arlington, VA 22230
Phone number: (703) 292-7318
Email: mgorman@nsf.gov
Speaker
Jane Fountain
Professor of Political Science and Public Policy
University of Massachusetts Amherst
Amherst, MA 01003
Phone Number: 508-347-5482
Email: fountain@polsci.umass.edu
Presentation Title: Developing a beta site for a national digital library for ethics education in science and technology: what have we learned?
Talk Description: This talk will present early results from the development of a set of tools, applications and materials meant to integrate international dimensions, social science research and social networking capacity into digital repositories for ethics education in science and engineering. The presentation will include discussion of usability and knowledge transfer for a range of users including faculty, administrators and graduate students.
Speaker
Kathleen Flint
Project Manager, Bring RCR Home
National Postdoctoral Association
Washington, DC 20005
Phone Number: 202-326-6494
Email: kflint@nationalpostdoc.org
Presentation Title: Bringing RCR Home: Approaches for Training Postdocs in RCR
Talk Description: This talk will present findings from the National Postdoctoral Association's Bring RCR Home project, an initiative to support the establishment of responsible conduct of research training programs for postdocs at their "home" institutions. These will include promising practices for engaging postdocs in RCR and addressing issues that are unique to their particular stage of career, as well as a toolkit of resources for the community to assist in creating such programs.
Speaker
Philip J. Langlais
Vice-Provost for Graduate Studies and Research
Old Dominion University
Norfolk, VA 23529
Phone Number: 757-683-6458
Email: planglai@odu.edu
Presentation Title: Science and Engineering Ethics Education: Recipes for Success
What kinds of administrative and faculty efforts are likely to lead to successful ethics education activities for students and postdocs? How can institutions create good ethical climates? This presentation will describe the evidence that change is needed in our training of students, future and current faculty, the inherent challenges and possible solutions to creating a culture and educational programs within the academy that promotes ethics, integrity and responsible conduct.
Resources
The NSF Ethics Education in Science and Engineering program offers opportunities to develop new activities to educate engineering graduate students on ethics. This focuses mostly on the conduct of research and issues of intellectual property, but awards have also focused on a wide range of topics such as humanitarian engineering ethics and nanotechnology in society.
GILEE at Virginia Tech
GILEE is a graduate interdisciplinary liberal engineering ethics curriculum developed at Virginia Tech by an interdisciplinary team of educators. It is supported by the National Science Foundation. The GILEE curriculum addresses how issues of engineering ethics and cultural identities are intertwined within a globalized workplace. Our transformative graduate curriculum eliminates an important disconnect between contemporary ethical issues in technology and engineering practice. It is a collaborative effort with the Virginia Tech Graduate School and its dean, Dr. Karen P. DePauw.
Launch of the Globethics.net Library - A Global Digital Library on Ethics
A new global digital library on ethics was launched on 9 October 2008. This library provides users free access to full text versions of about 200 journals and more than a million documents in the field of applied ethics. The digital library on ethics was developed by Globethics.net, a global network organization with the objective of empowering people in all regions of the world to reflect and act on ethical issues. They developed the Globethics.net Library to ensure that persons and institutions - especially in Africa, Asia and Latin-America - have access to good quality and up to date knowledge resources. There is no cost involved in using the library. Individuals only need to register (free of charge) as participants on the Globethics.net website (www.globethics.net) to get access to all the full text journals, encyclopedias, e-books and other resources in the library. More information on how to access the library as well as on how to submit documents to the library is available at www.globethics.net.
Click here for the AAAS-NAS Compilation of Resources.
Engineers work in multi-national corporations and in countries all around the world. The work of the ASCE Committee on Global Principles for Professional Conduct can be found at: http://content.asce.org/global/principles/GlobalHomePage. html. The Engineer's Charter, signed by over 150 engineering leaders worldwide, is translated into 4 languages and can be found at: http://content.asce.org/global/principles/Charter.html.
Emerging technologies create new attention to ethical issues associated with them. One development that has incited both public and expert interest is the field of nano-science, nano-engineering, and nano-technology. Resources concerning nano-ethics can be found at NanoEthicsBank.
A recent workshop in Golden, Colorado, addressed the question why scientists and engineers ought to address the "broader impacts" of their research. More information on it can be found at "Making Sense of the ‘Broader Impacts’ of Science and Technology."
Several research projects focus on teaching and learning ethics in udergraduate and graduate engineering education. Two that may be of interest are:
The following websites offer resources on engineering ethics:
Please send suggestions for additional ethics resources to Rachelle Hollander.