Institutional Transformation: VERITIES - Virtue-Based Education for Responsibility and Integrity To Increase Excellence in STEM

Michigan State University, East Lansing MI

Investigators

Abstract

This award supports a research project to transform the way that scientists are trained to think about the ethical dimensions of scientific practice. The project is called VERITIES, short for Virtue-based Education for Responsibility and Integrity to Increase Excellence in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). It is based in the PI's scientific virtue-theoretic account, which is backed by a prior national study of science's ethical culture with data from over 1100 scientists; the earlier project identified a coherent set of values that included attentiveness, objectivity, perseverance, skepticism, meticulousness, and humility to evidence, all centered on core virtues of honesty and curiosity. VERITIES builds on a tested implementation over a seven-year period at BEACON, an NSF Science and Technology Center; it scales up the piloted approach to an institutional transformation project at Michigan State University. Its primary goals are to test what can be done at a top level (R1) public research university, and thereby serve as a test bed for a national transformative effort. The project will culminate in train-the-trainers workshops at professional conferences for Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) to begin to seed the approach broadly. The VERITIES team, whose research is being supported by this award, will begin by collecting baseline data of ethical culture and practices using a university-wide survey. The team members will then adapt graduate student scientific-values training for varying circumstances of STEM departments revealed by the survey, and they will also train diverse faculty to serve as committed exemplars to support change in ethical culture. They will then assess the efficacy of these interventions with a quasi-controlled study of graduate student cohorts and with focused interviews of faculty members. In these engagements, the team will utilize the PI's scientific virtue-theoretic account together with a new approach to RCR training that uses modules that help conversants explore how each virtue ties scientific identity to excellence of practice. The modules were developed using a guided dialogue framework pioneered by the Toolbox Dialogue Initiative. Their use of these modules in RCR training will serve to promote an increase in conversations about disciplinary virtues and increased sensitivity to normative dimensions of scientific practice, which the project regards as key indicators of successful RCR training. Such increases will serve to bring about a deeper understanding of the nature of the scientific virtues in general and within the science, leading to more thoughtful consideration of how they ought to be expressed in scientific practice. These changes will lead more generally to a more thoughtful and renewed commitment to a culture of excellence and integrity in STEM. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.