INTRODUCING ETHICS ACROSS THE CURRICULUM: A GUIDE FOR GEOSCIENTISTS

Formally incorporating geoethics into traditional geoscience courses can seem an intimidating and time-consuming prospect. Faculty members of IUPUI’s Department of Earth Sciences have participated in a multi-year NSF-funded project organized around a faculty learning community guided by experts in ethics and community engaged learning. Each individual developed ethics-focused activities and assessments for their specific course. Taken together these courses represent all levels of our undergraduate curriculum. The common theme was “What does it mean to become an ethical Earth scientist?”. Activities and discussions focused on macro-ethics topics (i.e., extinction, resource utilization, environmental contamination, role of scientists in society) and on micro-ethics (i.e., how to collect, interpret, and present data in an ethical way). We met monthly in year 1 to develop an ethical framework and explored our individual ethical identities. In years 2 to 4, we implemented and revised the curricular materials. Through this process, faculty have (a) recognized that engaging in conversation about the ethical dimensions of our work is an opportunity for growth as educators, (b) recognized the value of making ethical dilemmas and implications more explicit and transparent to students, and (c) become more comfortable leading discussions and evaluating student reflections about ethical conundrums from students with a range of perspectives. Evaluations of our effectiveness in teaching ethics showed that the DEAL rubric was particularly helpful in assessing student reflections. The inclusion of micro-ethics activities increased student ownership in their professional development. Students nearly universally embraced these activities and reported increased ethical reasoning. Students are motivated by protecting our environment and reported growing interest in community engagement efforts that promote ethical practices. We are exploring strategies to help other faculty in our department add geoethics into their courses without having had the experience of the faculty learning community. We conclude that infusing ethical foundations and wrestling with difficult problems throughout the STEM curriculum is important for the personal and professional growth of both students and faculty.