Building Inclusive Ethical Cultures in STEM: A Practice-Based Workshop

Workshop Schedule

This two-day 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 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. This will be followed by a discussion of effective frameworks for implementing recommendations made by the panelists as well as best practices and potential hurdles in implementing these frameworks. Participants of the workshop will also be guided through the development of personalized plans for implementing some of these educational interventions in their labs, courses or departments.

The workshop is 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 covered will include:

• How can meaningful discussions about ethics be effectively integrated into research labs?
• What are approaches and tools to effectively integrate research ethics education?
• How do we build more inclusive research environments?
• How can researchers, junior faculty, and 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?

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).