Preparing Ethical Chemists through a Second-Year Seminar Course (original) (raw)
Related papers
A New Approach to Teaching Ethics in General Chemistry
2010
As part of summer undergraduate research, students from several two-year colleges in Illinois visit Illinois State University (ISU) for an intensive ten-week research experience. The program (known officially as the NSF Undergraduate Research Collaborative STEM ENGINES program) is a joint effort involving primarily the seven campuses of the City Colleges of Chicago, William Rainey Harper College, Oakton Community College, the College of DuPage, and ISU. Other participating institutions include Youngstown State University, Chicago State University, and Hope College. The goals of the program’s project are to:
Incorporation of ethical and societal issues in biochemistry into a senior seminar course
Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Education, 2003
In their senior year, biochemistry majors at the University of Detroit Mercy take a senior seminar course entitled "Recent Advances in Biochemistry Related to Societal Issues." Students read papers selected from the current literature and take turns presenting these papers to the class. Papers are grouped into units dealing with molecular biology, protein structure/function, apoptosis/cancer/AIDS, and neurochemistry. The ethical/societal implications of the research are also discussed. In addition, a term paper dealing with societal issues and written in dialogue format by teams of students is required. The students present their dialogue papers as skits to an audience composed of faculty as well as junior biochemistry, chemistry, and biology majors. Based upon a survey taken at the beginning, at midterm, and at the end of the semester, the familiarity of the students with the ethical/societal issues related to the subjects covered increased significantly. Also, in course evaluations administered at the end of the semester, students expressed a high degree of satisfaction with this course.
Using "ethics labs" to set a framework for ethical discussion in an undergraduate science course
Biochemistry and molecular biology education : a bimonthly publication of the International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, 2007
Teaching ethics across the curriculum is a strategy adopted by many universities. One of the fundamental aims of teaching ethics across the curriculum is to get students to see ethics as truly relevant to the subjects they are studying. Ideally, students will come to see that ethics is a thread woven deeply in the fabric of all knowledge and practice. The standard approach, in which students are required to take a separate ethics course, is not especially well suited to this task, but incorporating ethics into science courses presents significant challenges and is likely to meet with resistance, if only because professors in the sciences are often untrained in the teaching of ethics. In an effort to raise the standard of science education as well as comply with a university-wide curricular mandate, we as a team developed the concept of an ‘‘ethics lab.’’ We discuss the design of the exercises done during laboratory sections, the training of the graduate students who run the exercises, and the iterations of the exercises over time. We report unanticipated rapid positive outcomes of an attempt to integrate ethics education into a sophomore/ junior level science course, Introduction to Genetics.
2018 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition Proceedings
Her research interests include ethics education and the societal impacts of engineering and technology. Dr. Chris Swan, Tufts University Chris Swan is an associate professor in the Civil and Environmental Engineering department at Tufts University. He has additional appointments in the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life and the Center for Engineering Education and Outreach at Tufts. His current engineering education research interests focus on community engagement, service-based projects and examining whether an entrepreneurial mindset can be used to further engineering education innovations. He also does research on the development of reuse strategies for waste materials.
Teaching ethics to bioscience students – a survey of undergraduate provision
A survey has been carried out to investigate the provision of ethics teaching to students following Bioscience programmes at UK Universities. We report that 69% of undergraduate programmes described by respondents included an ethical component, although it may not be appropriate to extrapolate this value nationally. When ethics is taught, it is a little more likely to appear in the second year of a degree than in the third year, but with only limited use being made of the first year. In the vast majority of cases this teaching is carried out by bioscience staff from within the institution, but with the frequent involvement of staff from other Departments (e.g. Philosophy) and/or invited experts from outside the University. The majority of bioscience respondents were aware of the requirements for ethics in subject benchmark statements. A certain level of apprehension about teaching ethics was noted. Requests were made for additional teaching resources, including case studies, audio-visual material and briefing documents on the key issues, along with their collation via a bespoke website.
Teaching Ethics to Science and Engineering Students
2005
In April, 2005, the Center for the Philosophy of Nature and Science Studies hosted a symposium focusing on the World Conference on Science recommendation: That the ethics of science should be an integral part of the training of scientists and engineers. In this paper one of the main conclusions of the symposium is presented and discussed: If the teaching of ethics to science and engineering students is seen as part of a strategy for securing sustainable development and betterment of the human condition, then the basic ethical principles and responsibilities of science, which the students are required to internalise must refer to something more than the main types of ethical theories (i.e. consequentialism, utilitarianism, virtue ethics, deontological theories and contractua-lism).
Developing ethics competencies among science students at the University of Copenhagen
European Journal of Engineering Education, 2008
Many philosophers and sociologists of science have tried to understand the profound changes that have occurred in science, engineering and technology. In the first part of this paper, I present the work of one such scholar: Jerome Ravetz who, in collaboration with Silvio Funtowicz, has characterised what he calls 'postnormal science'. The purpose of this theoretical part of the paper is to describe what characterises contemporary science and to formulate which competencies contemporary scientists need to act ethically. In the second part of the paper, I present and analyse the course 'Philosophy of Science and Ethics' that I have taught since 2005 to biochemistry, chemistry and nanotechnology students at the University of Copenhagen. The course is intended to prepare its participants for postnormal knowledge production that is scientific work that is embedded in a societal context characterised by uncertainty and conflicting values systems. With this in mind, I analyse the course by relating its content to the concepts that describe postnormal science, and I discuss how the course develops the ethics competencies that contemporary scientists need to work in postnormal science. I will also briefly discuss the relevance of the course for engineering students.
2005
In April, 2005, the Center for the Philosophy of Nature and Science Studies hosted a symposium focusing on the World Conference on Science recommendation: That the ethics of science should be an integral part of the training of scientists and engineers. In this paper one of the main conclusions of the symposium is presented and discussed: If the teaching of ethics to science and engineering students is seen as part of a strategy for securing sustainable development and betterment of the human condition, then the basic ethical principles and responsibilities of science, which the students are required to internalise must refer to something more than the main types of ethical theories (i.e. consequentialism, utilitarianism, virtue ethics, deontological theories and contractualism).