Course Syllabi
- Ethics, Culture, & Community-Based Research in Environmental Science, Engineering, and Related Fields, by Dianne Quigley, David Sonnenfeld ( Summer 2013) (Summer 2014). A three day-long summer workshop at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry where students will review human subject protections, IRB requirements, informed consent, cultural competence/humility, community-based participatory research, and other critical components of research ethics.
- Ethics for Engineers, UMASS-Dartmouth : Spring 2014 Ethics for Engineers is a new one credit course that provides ethics training to graduate students through an orientation to the topics in engineering ethics in order to prepare students to become familiar with discussions and methods for developing ethical approaches to engineering research and applied projects. Contemporary issues in engineering ethics will be presented through mostly on-line training resources but also several in-class discussions to hear lectures from several experts’ experiences with ethical challenges in engineering. These issues include research integrity, professional ethics, human subjects protections, animal protections, intellectual property rights/ software patent issues and engineering ethics and sustainability.
- Marine Science and Ethics, UMASS Dartmouth: Online Marine science researchers grapple with common ethical problems and dilemmas that challenge all academic sciences: professional research integrity - the potential for data fabrication/ falsification, conflicts of interest, human subjects violations, working with scientific uncertainty and values conflicts in marine conservation and fishing regulations. The National Science Foundation (NSF) has made “Ethics Education” a priority for student researchers in these sciences. Science and engineering are global endeavors, introducing cultural differences, social and environmental contextual complexities, and professional pressures for funding and publication. The NSF Ethics Education in Science and Engineering (EESE) has funded this collaborative course, developed with The School of Marine Science and Technology and the Department of Bioengineering of the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth and the Northeast Ethics Education Partnership (NEEP) at Brown University’s Center for Environmental Studies.Students will gain ethics training in these topical areas: research integrity, human subjects protections, ethical challenges in marine science modelling and fishing governance, ethics of marine conservation and regulations, environmental ethics/sustainability in marine sciences, and data management/ intellectual property rights.
- Marine Science Policy and Ethics: a new syllabus that incorporates environmental policies with Marine Science ethical training is also included here.
- Ethics, Culture, & Community-Based Environmental Research NEEP.2013.SummerWkshp.Agenda, by Dianne Quigley and David Sonnenfeld, Spring 2013. Training on research ethics combined with cultural diversity will prepare students with new research approaches/methods that are appropriate to field studies, community-based partnerships and research with cultural groups. Students will learn about required human subjects protections, ethical theories, cultural competence theory, and review environmental case studies for community-based, culturally-appropriate approaches.
- Research Ethics in Environmental Research, now Ethics, Culture and Community-based Research, by Dianne Quigley and David Sonnenfeld, Winter/Spring 2011, 2013, 2014. In this course, students learn about required human subjects protections, ethical theories, cultural competence theory, and review environmental case studies for community-based, culturally-appropriate approaches.
- Summer Graduate Workshop on Research Ethics and Cultural Competence in Environmental Science, Engineering, and Related Fields, by Dianne Quigley, Summer 2011.
- Environmental Justice: The Science and Political Economy of Environmental Health and Justice, by Dianne Quigley, Spring 2011. In this course, students will learn about the disproportionate burdens of environmental contamination and about the health disparities affecting communities of color across the US and internationally. Since the early 1990's, an environmental justice movement in the US, led by many racially-diverse leaders, has achieved much progress in advocating for just forms of health research, improved environmental/health policies, and worker protections to remedy these harms of racial/cultural injustice. In this course, we will review environmental health/justice theories and perspectives as they bear on case studies of Black Americans, Hispanic Americans, Native Americans, Latin American indigenous groups and Asian-Americans and how they have organized to improve health and justice in their rural/urban neighborhoods, reservations and cities. We will review programs that have been organized to address childhood asthma reduction, lead poisoning prevention, waste recycling, clean-up and restoration of contaminated sites, sustainable/organic agriculture, clean energy programs and cancer and health disparities research. Students will be asked to critically examine these efforts and also explore unresolved, chronic problems with environmental injustices and health impacts.
- Working with Communities: Cultural Competence and Ethics, by Dianne Quigley, Fall 2010. New ethical research practices with community populations stress partnership and participatory models with community members. Working in partnership and sharing control over the research process can lead to significant new challenges in the scientific practice of community/environmental health interventions and environmental research. This course will explore how bio-medical research protections for individuals can be extended to groups and communities by reviewing case studies in community-based, participatory research and ethical theories of principle ethics, virtue ethics, communitarian, deontology, ethics of care and post-modern ethics. A review of informed consent theory and international case studies on informed consent with communities will provide training to students on how these research ethics challenges are being addressed. We will review public health, environmental studies research approaches/designs that can engage culturally-diverse communities with culturally-appropriate methods.