Past Projects
Developed from 2005-2011, the NanoEthicsBank is a database conceived as a resource for researchers, scholars, students, and the general public who are interested in the social and ethical implications of nanotechnology. Items in the database include normative documents, such as guidelines for safety in the workplace, and descriptive materials, such as analysis of the U.S. government’s capacity for oversight and studies of the media coverage of nanotechnology.
In 2006 the National Science Foundation awarded a grant for $238,663 to IIT with PI Michael Davis (CSEP/Humanities), and co-PIs Vivian Weil (CSEP/Humanities) and Kathryn Riley (Chair, Humanities). The grant was administered by CSEP. "Ethics in the Details" involved involve collaboration with engineering faculty and graduate students at IIT, UIC, and Howard.
The grant funded workshops that teach faculty and students to develop "micro-insertions"--small ways to add ethical issues to problems in the graduate engineering curricula. In addition, the grant supported the development of a Web-based "Ethics In-Basket" to disseminate ethics problems to engineering faculty worldwide.
In 2005, the Center began a project to develop a code of ethics for the Illinois Institute of Technology community, including, students, faculty, staff, and alumni. Feel free to read and leave comments about the current version of the code.
From 1997-2003, IIT hosted colleagues from institutions internationally and across the country for the Ethics Across the Curriculum summer workshops. Running seven days, these workshops allowed twenty participants from a variety of disciplines to discuss ways in meaningfully integrate ethics into undergraduate and graduate curricula. The workshop had been successfully offered to IIT faculty in 1991-1994, and a generous grant from the National Science Foundation allowed CSEP to expand the workshop to include participants from other institutions starting in 1994. Since then, a number of other institutions have started hosting their own workshops.
In 1993, the IEEE Computer Society (IEEE-CS) and the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) formed a joint committee to write a code of ethics for software engineers. This archive includes meeting minutes, correspondence, and the different versions of the code developed throughout the project.. The Software Engineer’s Code of Ethics and Standards of Practice was adopted by IEEE-CS and ACM in 1998, and since then, the code has been adopted by software engineering and computer societies worldwide.
The Module Series in Applied Ethics was produced by the Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions in under a grant from the Exxon Education Foundation. This series is intended for use in a wide range of undergraduate, graduate, and continuing education programs in such areas as science and/or technology public policy, and professional ethics courses in engineering, business, and computer science.
CSEP News
