Friday, October 9, 2020

Building Inclusive Ethical Cultures in STEM: Call for Proposals

 


Workshop Date: April 23-24, 2021

Proposals Due: November 20, 2020


A Virtual Workshop hosted by the Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions, Illinois Institute of Technology, and the University of Texas San-Antonio. 


This workshop seeks to share best practices to effectively engage students and faculty working in research labs and lab-based classrooms in building inclusive ethical cultures. This training moves beyond traditional research ethics training into frameworks and approaches to strengthen the ethical culture in research labs. 


The two-day workshop will feature a series of short presentations and panel discussions that showcase best practices and approaches to embedding educational interventions in research labs and lab-based courses. These short presentations and panel discussions will be followed by a workshop where effective frameworks for implementing recommendations made by the panelists are discussed, best practices and potential hurdles are shared, and participants are guided through the development of personalized plans for implementing some of these educational interventions in their labs, courses or departments. 


The short presentations, panel discussions, and workshops are aimed at 

  • Young principal investigators/junior faculty who are in the process of building their own research groups; 

  • Instructors from both four-year and two-year colleges who teach lab-based STEM courses;

  • Departmental chairs interested in programmatic approaches to improving mentoring, research ethics education, and the research culture of their department.


Topics for contributions may include but are not limited to:

  • How can meaningful discussions about ethics be effectively integrated into research labs?

  • What are approaches and tools to effectively integrate research ethics education among research group members?

  • How do we build more inclusive research environments?

  • How can junior faculty/young principal investigators begin to form strategies for building inclusive, ethical lab environments?

  • How can we better support and empower graduate students to effectively handle ethical questions that arise in research - especially international students and underrepresented students?


We invite presentations from instructors, principal investigators, faculty, and administrators working at two and four-year educational institutions in the STEM fields. Please submit an abstract of up to 500 words. Abstracts for 10-15 minute presentations are due by November 20, 2020. Please send your abstracts and questions about the event to csep@iit.edu

This workshop will be held virtually and there will be no charge for participation.


The workshop is part of the NSF funded project “A Bottom-up Approach to Building a Culture of Responsible Research and Practice in STEM”. The workshop is being organized by Elisabeth Hildt (Illinois Institute of Technology), Kelly Laas (Illinois Institute of Technology), Eric M. Brey (University of Texas at San Antonio), and Christine Miller (Savannah College of Art and Design).