Summary of UW meetings, Nov 7, 2005

1. LANGURE Meeting of Senior Fellows

Present:

  • Gary Comstock
  • Robert Streiffer
  • Robin Kurtz
  • Rebecca Stepien
  • Karin Ellison
  • Sara Patterson
  • Rodney Stevenson

Main highlights:

  • I am planning on teaching the “Introduction to Research Ethics” course in the fall 2006 for the first time. I will start out using one of our existing special topics numbers in Medical History and Bioethics. If anyone is interested in having students in their department being able to take it for credit, they should identify a special topics number in their department, let me know, and we can try to arrange for all of the different classes to meet at the same time and the same place. I’m not sure yet how many students we want this first time round, but I’m not too worried that we’ll get too many.
  • We are working to identify a few additional faculty members, preferably key faculty in large departments with lots of graduate students. There is a large push at Purdue, where Gary last visited, to start using the course in Chemistry, so we will try to identify someone there. We also still need someone in physics.
  • We went through the core course, and Gary got many helpful comments on improving the content and nomenclature.
  • Discussed the exclusive focus of the grant on doctoral students, and it was noted that in some areas, all the coursework is done in the masters program and by the time they get into the Ph. D. program, they no longer take courses. One solution to this was mentioned at meeting with the graduate administration, which is that this course would count as directly related to the student’s research, so could be taken by dissertators.

Things for people to do:

  • Everyone: if you are interested in having input immediately on the module development rather than waiting, feel free to contact your counterpart at NCSU.
  • Robin was going to ask the vice chancellor that she knows who is a physicist for possible names in the physics department
  • Sara was going to look for someone interested in doing the women and underrepresented minorities module, since Rebecca was interested in moving to the animal use module.
  • Gary: please send around the latest roster
  • Someone mentioned that Fred Bradley, in Materials Science and Engineering and Engineering Physics, might be able to give us a lead in Physics, but I can’t tell from my notes who it was that could contact him
  • Rodney: please send me the contact information for the other people working in business ethics who you thought would be very effective as teachers and at interfacing with the administrative hierarchy

 

2. LANGURE Meeting with Graduate School Administration

Present:

  • Gary Comstock
  • Robert Streiffer
  • Martin Cadwallader (Vice Chancellor for Research and Dean of the Graduate School)
  • Bill Mellon (Responsible for research policy on campus)
  • Karin Ellison (Office of Research Compliance)
  • Lois Beecham (Asst. Dean in Grad School, Responsible for graduate student academic affairs; works most closely with directors of the graduate programs)
  • Eileen Callahan (Graduate Student Professional Development)

Main Highlights:

  • Martin Cadwallader was very supportive of the overall project, and did not even seem phased when Gary said that his aim was that all doctoral students be required to take at least 1 credit of research ethics
  • Clarified that the focus of the grant is for doctoral students not in the Medical School (primarily an issue for UW, but some of the other participating institutions also have health sciences programs (e.g., nursing)) and that the humanities departments will not be targeted. It will be tricky to ensure that NSF resources do not go towards NIH covered students
  • Supportive of identifying a few key faculty in large, prestigious, departments to help build the initial momentum
  • Supportive of building support for LANGURE through the graduate students and faculty, with support from the grad school, rather than pushing the requirement from the top down
  • Thought that the best time to send out an announcement from the Grad School to the DGPs was at the end of March, beginning of April, when the doctoral students were registering
  • Dean Cadwallader could inform the Associate Deans for Research, who meet as a group periodically, of LANGURE
  • Eileen e-mailed me names of the following people who might be interested in LANGURE
    • Chemistry: Bob McMahan, Fleming Crim, and Chuck Casey
    • Biochemistry: Betty Craig
    • Bacteriology: Tim Donahue
    • Sociology and Director of the Wisconsin Cetner for Education Research: Adam Gamora

    ------------------------------

Robert Streiffer, Ph. D.