History of the Embedded Ethics Program

by Adam Thompson

November 3, 2022

Campus aerial

Adam Thompson and co-workers were invited to submit an abstract to the 23rd Annual Conference on Ethics Across the Curriculum on the basis of the work they've done on the embedded ethics program. The program was established in 2020 primarily by Thompson, Colton Harper, and Quinn White. Harper and Thompson began developing the idea around the spring of 2019 and started shopping it around that summer to the Department of Philosophy and the School of Computing. In late spring of 2020, White joined to push it across the finish line.

As the fall 2020 semester began at UNL we rolled out our pilot program with a $1,000 grant from the Center for Transformative Teaching (CTT). The CTT grant allowed us to hire two graduate research assistants for two hours a week for the semester. So, we invited philosophy graduate students Trevor Adams and Christopher Stratman to join the team. During the pilot program we developed ethics modules for CSCE 235: Discrete Mathematics, CSCE 473: Computer Vision, CSCE 438: Internet of Things, and SOFT 468/CSCE 468/CSCE 868: Eye-Tracking Software. That semester we implemented the modules developed for the latter three. The following spring 2021 semester, Quinn reworked the modules he had individually taken on while Thompson reworked his, and they reimplemented them. This time Janelle Gormley joined to offer her expert support when Thompson could not be a part of a novel implementation in SOFT 468/CSCE 468/CSCE 868.

We were pleased to be awarded a $20,000 grant from the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation. The grant supported our move from the pilot phase to Phase 1 of the program by establishing a one-year graduate teaching line for a philosophy graduate student. We were lucky that the very talented Zach Wrublewski agreed to join the team. Currently, Zach is developing and implementing modules with some oversight from Thompson.

Thompson and Wrublewski’s presentation at the October conference went well. It seems that they were correct to assume that they are at the forefront of a major change to the way computer scientists and engineers will learn ethics and moral reasoning. They are currently working to establish a working group between individuals at institutions similar to UNL. The group will work to understand how to strengthen the embedded ethics programs that they are instituting by developing ways to assess, analyze, and augment their effectiveness. The original invitation also came with an invitation to submit a manuscript of their work to be considered for publication in the Society for Ethics Across the Curriculum’s popular journal, Teaching Ethics.

In addition, they would like to thank the people and institutions without whom the program would likely still be turning laps in Thompson’s and Harper's minds:

  • Chair of the Philosophy Department, Jennifer McKitrick
  • Chair of the School of Computing, Marylin Wolf
  • Professor Max Pierobon, School of Computing
  • Professor Suzette Peterson, School of Computing (retired)
  • Professor Ashok Samal, School of Computing
  • Professor Bonita Sharif, School of Computing
  • Professor Mehmet Vuran, School of Computing
  • Eyde Olson, Senior Instructional Designer, CTT
  • College of Law
  • The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation