INTRODUCING AN ETHICAL COMPONENT INTO TEACHING ENVIRONMENTAL GEOLOGY

The IUPUI Department of Earth Sciences is part of the Integrated Community-Engaged Learning and Ethical Reflection Framework (I-CELER) grant led by IUPUI’s STEM Education Innovation & Research Institute (SEIRI). The grant’s purpose is: (1) to integrate I-CELER into courses at all levels of the undergraduate curriculum, (2) to explore the organizational impact of the project on institutional change, and (3) to analyze individual changes associated with students’ and educators’ ethical development. The goal is to produce ethically-literate, civic-minded, and empathic undergraduate students, educators who are confident about integrating ethics and community-engaged pedagogy in their courses, and transformed departments that incorporate ethics instruction throughout their curriculum

Earth and Our Environment is the 100-level gateway course for the I-CELER grant. The course now features ethics-related questions on assignments and exams. These questions are partly based on the research of Dr. David Mogk, author of several articles on geoethics. The purpose is to stimulate student thinking about how these situations affect their current and future lives. The ethical component is utilized mainly in the modules on natural hazards, pollution, and groundwater, as well as mineral and energy resources. To make the component relevant, scenarios and questions are based on actual laws, court cases, and other factual events to prevent accusations of “inventing” situations designed to elicit a specific response. These have also been shared with Earth Science faculty who are not part of the I-CELER project for use in their sections of the course. Students are required to respond to these ethical questions to receive course credit, but since their responses are based on their opinions we have not linked course credit to the giving of “correct” answers. The students also complete a pre- and post-course survey designed by SEIRI to measure how students perceive ethical behavior and if their attitude on ethics has changed having taken the course.