Cultivating Leaders for Ethical STEM

University Of Notre Dame, Notre Dame IN

Investigators

Abstract

The University of Notre Dame will undertake a project that addresses the question: Since cultivating cultures for ethical STEM requires effective leadership, what training content and methods most successfully turn students into ethical leaders? The literature tells us that ethical leaders are role models to their peers, colleagues, mentees, and students. The leadership programs at the University of Notre Dame will thus provide training in a manner that empowers the trainees to mentor others with the expectation that, as mentors, they will perform scientific and technological research with an eye to the implications for society and pass this approach on to their own students and peers. The research team will assess and compare two different leadership training programs, the first grounded in research on business and management ethics, the second in research on ethics training for STEM students. While the primary goal of these two lines of research is the same - cultivating ethical leaders - the theories behind them and methods used by trainers are often quite different. Both leadership programs build from previously gathered assessment data, methods, and tools, and are imbued with ethics; both train STEM graduate students using an immersive and cumulative service-learning model. The two educational programs evaluated by this project are train-the-trainer programs that have the power to create exponential change rather than simply incremental improvements - both at Notre Dame and beyond. A primary outcome of the project will be the creation of a blended program that combines the best features of each program and appeals to both the business and research ethics approaches. Through the compilation, analysis, and dissemination of this blended program broadly, we will be promoting the most successful content and methods that turn STEM students into ethical leaders, thereby cultivating cultures for ethical STEM. Over three years, 93 STEM students will receive leadership training. Our research project will: (1) assess these two programs' effectiveness in training ethical leaders, and (2) by comparing the results across the programs, identify the training components that will best equip students to grapple with ethical research dilemmas, helping to establish an ethical lab and workplace culture. By assessing participants before, after, and one-year out from their respective programs, we will evaluate content retention, ethical decision-making, and the effectiveness of training methods and materials, and create an overarching program.