Research Ethics
I became interested in the ethical conduct of research when, as a graduate teaching assistant, I caught several graduate students committing gross plagiarism on an assigned research paper. Shortly after this incident, the first Walter H. Wilkinson Graduate Research Ethics Fellowship was announced. I applied for the fellowship but was not selected. However, I was invited to participate in the Land Grant University Research Ethics (LANGURE) as a Junior Fellow.
My work with the LANGURE project has been a rewarding learning experience. I worked with scholars here at NCSU as well as from several other lang grant institutions nation-wide. Together we developed a discipline-specific module for Computer Science and Engineering. My primary contribution was a summary essay highlighting several important and often overlooked ethical issues in computer science research. In addition to leading 2 seminars for Computer Science graduate students, I presented a conference paper and helped organize and lead a workshop on the topic of research ethics and computer science. One of the most important lessons I learned from this work is the role that critical thinking skills should play in a researcher's day-to-day work. Codes of conduct are not always ideal and are often written and revised as a result of bad situations that have occurred. As research continually pushes the envelope of knowledge forward, codes may not keep pace, and researchers must be equipped with the skills to recognize potential ethical dilemmas before they occur.
In 2007 I was selected as the Wilkinson Research Ethics Fellow for the 2007-08 academic year. As the subject of inquiry for this fellowship, I was asked to identify research ethics-related resources available to doctoral students at NCSU. The scope of my search included not only courses, seminars, etc. on the NCSU campus, but expanded to include resources and speakers from Duke University, North Carolina Central University, and The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I delivered my report to the Graduate School in May, 2008.
