This Nanotechnology Undergraduate Education (NUE) in Engineering program entitled, "NUE: NANO-SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, ETHICS, AND POLICY (NanoSTEP)", at Colorado School of Mines (CSM), under the direction of Dr. Corrine Packard, seeks to introduce nanotechnology undergraduate education in engineering emphasizing societal, ethical, economic, and environmental (S3E) issues at every step in the humanities and social sciences course requirements at the CSM. The goal will be pursued through three objectives. 1) For Nature and Human Values (a first-year, four semester credit writing intensive core course). 2) For Human Systems (a second-year, three semester credit, globalization core course). 3) NanoSTEP will introduce nanoS3E issues into select third- and fourth-year elective courses in both the liberal arts and technical disciplines. As a result, all CSM undergraduate majors will be introduced to multiple levels of teaching and learning concerning S3E issues relevant to nanotechnology.
NanoSTEP grows out of previous collaborations between the Colorado Fuel Cells Center (CFCC) and the Division of Liberal Arts and International Studies (LAIS) in ways that can serve as a model for similar efforts at other institutions seeking to promote any broad interdisciplinary infusion into an engineering curriculum, especially one linked with the social sciences and humanities.
NanoSTEP manifests three broader impacts: 1) it strongly advances discovery and understanding (with regard to generally neglected social justice issues) in conjunction with the development of teaching and learning modules; 2) it will deepen participation of underrepresented groups at CSM by integrating relevant social justice issues into teaching and learning and will also broaden participation of globally relevant groups through an international networking and partnership component; and 3) it will benefit society by offering intelligent pathways for scientists and engineers to better appreciate societal concerns and also, to some extent through dissemination among non-technical scholarly communities, for non-scientist citizens to better appreciate nanotechnology.
Through staff training and student instruction, the NanoSTEP project infused undergraduate education in engineering with dialogue about the complex ethics of emerging technologies, with a focus on nanotechnology. Nanotechnology refers to the development of materials that are engineered at size scales much smaller than are perceivable by the human eye. These have properties never before envisioned, enabling new or enhanced functionalities in information technology, energy, environmental science, medicine, homeland security, food safety, transportation, and other technological or industrial sectors. None of the research activities, including the faculty workshops and student assignments, were designed nor intended to produce particular effects in student opinions, for example, to convince them of the safety of nanotechnologies. Rather, students were introduced to the basic technical features of nanotechnologies and a variety of standpoints on the societal, ethical, economic and environmental dimensions of its applications. Workshops were developed and deployed to educate instructional staff about nanotechnology, the ethical and environmental issues surrounding nanotechnology, and the societal impacts of new technology development in a global environment. Modules based on nanotechnology were introduced in two core classes at the Colorado School of Mines, through which all regular, matriculating undergraduate students (> 3000 students) passed during the grant period. Data was collected to understand how the nanotechnology modules changed student viewpoints about the ethics of nanotechnology and the complexity of student thought regarding nanotechnology in a global economy. The results showed consistent refinement of student opinions and understanding of the social, ethical, environmental, and economic issues surrounding nanotechnology development, including: (1) increased understanding of the technical nature of nanotechnology and decreased uncertainty in their weighing of its risks and benefits, with students forming defensible opinions, supported by facts, rather than seeing the technology as emerging, science fiction, or a future possibility; and (2) improved ability of the students to discuss stakeholders, ethics, standards, and social, environmental, and economic costs in complex terms. Ethics education at the undergraduate level is important in developing well-rounded, responsible engineers who have a broader view of technological impacts on societies, environment, and the economy. Students who were exposed to the modules received training and education in evaluating risks and benefits of new technologies, in the ethics of new technology development, and in understanding how different societies have developed historically in efforts to understand globalization. The vast majority of students involved in this project will become engineers working in a professional, globalized setting, so the education in the ethics of technology development will help them guide their colleagues and employers in responsible engineering decision making. Furthermore, the students and staff who have learned about nanotechnology and its associated ethics will be better able to critically discern information about new and emerging technologies, particularly the distribution of risks and benefits among different portions of society and the potential impacts on society in adopting or choosing not to adopt an emerging technology. The new curricular materials that were developed as part of this project were effective in getting undergraduate engineering students to think about societal, ethical, economic, and environmental consequences of new technologies, such as nanotechnology. These materials are publicly available for implementation at other universities in the US and abroad and for discussion with other researchers in ethics education. The NanoSTEP research team has already developed particularly close collaborations with researchers at the University of the Basque Country (Spain) and the Graduate University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (China). In summary, this research project provided the foundation for curricular innovation resulting in measurable enhancement of students’ critical thinking abilities and international research collaborations on the ethics of nanotechnology from a global perspective.
