The Northeast Ethics Education Partnership (NEEP) between Brown University, Providence, RI and the SUNY College of Environment, Science and Forestry School, Syracuse, NY, is a new initiative for developing regional research ethics/cultural competence training for environmental science, studies and engineering graduate students in Central New York and at Brown University. In this partnership, the research team is conducting faculty and student mentoring workshops on research ethics training combined with cultural competence/relativity training. Three summer workshops are planned for graduate students at SUNY-ESF and for four other universities in the central NY region. The team also will conduct Train-the-Trainer workshops at three national society meetings in environmental scsience and studies to share resources with participating faculty and graduate students for research ethics/cultural competence training. The NEEP is developing a website with research ethics/cultural competence training materials and curriculum modules with case study references, ethical guidelines and applied ethical advice. On-line training opportunities also will be available.
(NEEP) received a grant award from the NSF-EESE grant program for a partnership between Brown University Center for Environmental Studies and the State University of New York, College of Environmental Sciences and Forestry (SUNY-ESF). This partnership was successful in achieving these key outcomes from 2010-2014: Graduate Student Training at the Partnering Universities and Central New York Universities for Ethics, Culture and Community-Based Research in Place-based Communities and with Cultural Groups NEEP conducted four summer three day workshops for August, 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014 and trained a total of 60 participants including 54 graduate students and 6 postdocs and faculty participants from SUNY-ESF and other Central New York universities. NEEP trained 18 graduate students in the SUNY-ESF Spring course offering, Ethics, Culture and Community-based Research since 2010, and conducted in-class presentations that gave one to three hours training for another 40 graduate students at SUNY-ESF. Both the Spring course and Summer workshops gave a solid visibility to the ESF campus for training in research ethics, culture and community-based research for field research in Environmental Studies/Sciences and Engineering. Several professors sustain ongoing training for human subjects protections, cultural competence and community-based research from NEEP training materials to environmental studies/engineering graduate students every year in their course curricula. These courses are anticipated to be offered in the future in the ESF-Outreach Program at SUNY-ESF. Since 2010, NEEP provided intensive training for 11 Brown graduate students for Ethics, Culture and Community-Based Research. 40 other Brown graduate students attended ethics workshops sponsored by the Superfund Research Program in 2011 and 2012. Currently Brown has Canvas course training materials on Ethics, Culture and Community-based Research being accessed campus-wide by many students and NEEP is preparing a new Canvas site for "Ethics for Engineers" for the Brown University School of Engineering for use by faculty and graduate students. At the partnering universities, ten graduate students worked as research assistants and conducted bibliographic research, developed training PowerPoint shows, organized course outreach, set up Blackboard sites, gave oral presentations and conducted evaluation research. NEEP developed new BlackBoard and Canvas sites with full course materials for conducting self-paced Certificate Training for Ethics, Culture and Community-based Research at both Brown University and SUNY-ESF. NEEP promotes these sites with faculty and offers short course workshops (1/2 day to -3 days) to promote the use of these sites. The sites are available to set up at other graduate schools nationwide. National and International Course Outreach/Training Resources Dissemination Since 2010, NEEP faculty presented train-the-trainer, workshops and oral presentations at these ten national/international conference venues: International Symposium for Society and Resource Management, Association for Environmental Studies and Sciences, Environmental Health, Society of Risk Analysis, Office of Research Integrity, Society for Conservation Biology, NAE PIRE Sustainable Cities Collaborators Workshop, and American Sociology Association - Environment Section, and Community-Campus Partnerships for Health. Our workshops were attended by 100 or more participant faculty and graduate students.and was an important achievement for bringing visibility to our training resources for many academic departments in environmental studies/sciences around the US and internationally. Training Materials Development NEEP has developed course content curricula and training slide resources for website dissemination for faculty, IRB professionals and graduate students. Most popular are 32 PowerPoint training shows on human subjects protections, group protections, cultural competence, ethical theories, environmental ethics, community-based research, human rights histories of cultural/racial groups, traditional ecological knowledge, environmental justice and more. NEEP created a list of users that has over 160 names of faculty, IRB professionals, graduate students and others. Many faculty represent departments of environmental sciences/studies and community health. This website dissemination is very broad and has likely reached hundreds of graduate students with intensive training in ethics, culture and community-based research. These PowerPoint shows provide a compilation of field research findings, theoretical perspectives, and applied ethics guidance from environmental science and ethics academic sources. These training materials were a very successful training and dissemination strategy for training graduate students, faculty and other research professionals in ethical approaches to environmental studies/sciences and engineering research. On the NEEP website, NEEP provides course syllabi for Ethics, Culture and Community-based Research, Environmental Justice, and Ethics for Engineers and bibliographies for topics in community-based research by research disciplines; research ethics; informed consent; cultural competence with additional bibliographies being posted Publications and Manuscripts To date, NEEP has produced four manuscripts on curriculum content, course development and course dissemination, cultural competence and "place ethics" for training graduate students in ethics, culture and community-based research for environmental studies and sciences. These manuscripts (one published; three under review) report on significant findings and outcomes of our NSF EESE funded NEEP goals and objectives for promoting new ethical approaches to field research in environmental studies/sciences. They have been submitted to journals that are frequently used by environmental studies/sciences researchers and graduate students..
