Students in the life sciences face a variety of important ethical issues about professional practice and the societal impacts of their science. The students' mentors, science faculty members, generally desire to be resources for them but, unfortunately, there is little institutional training, support, or reward for faculty who lead ethics discussions. The National Bioethics Institute (NBI) addresses this problem by expanding on a very successful effort that is lending critical assistance to life science faculty members. The project takes to a new national level, a regional effort that since 1991 has continuously sponsored workshops designed to integrate ethics into science courses and labs. A team of ethicists and life scientists plans each summer Institute. The training occurs over 40+ hours in a week of pedagogical sessions on how to teach ethics to science students, and lecture/discussion sessions on moral theory, ethics and science, ethics and religion, and public policy. During the week, each participant constructs a case study, role-playing exercise, or other pedagogical resource. After the Institute, on-campus participants continue to meet once a semester for three years, forming a critical mass of scientists at each campus formally engaged in ongoing discussion of ethical issues. Reunions for all participants occur for several years following the training program. This project will train 60 life scientists from across the U.S.: 30 at Oregon State University (OSU) in 1998, and 30 at Iowa State University (ISU) in 1999. These scientists will join approximately 250 `graduates` of prior and concurrent Bioethics Institutes held at ISU, the University of Illinois, Michigan State University, Purdue University, and North Carolina State University. The combined Institutes will train more than 300 scientists by the year 2000, forming a significant biological curricular reform movement in contemporary higher education. The NBI will be held once at OSU (the Western site) in May 1998 and once at ISU (the Midwestern site) in May 1999. North Carolina State University is preparing to join these two institutions as the Eastern site of future Bioethics Institutes. NCSU will be hosting Institutes in 1998 and 1999 funded by a grant from the National Agricultural Biotechnology Council (NABC). The NBI will also partner with an historically African American institution, Tuskegee University (TU) and a strong majority Hispanic American institution, Florida International University (FIU). Teams consisting of one philosopher and one life scientist from each institution will attend the OSU or NCSU Institutes. They will also supply names of life scientists who are potential Institute applicants from historically Hispanic and African American institutions, and explore with their administrators the possibility of making TU and FIU sites of future Bioethics Institutes. Assuming successful completion of this two year project, OSU, ISU, and NCSU will be positioned to host a permanent National Bioethics Institute, designed to rotate annually among the three schools. The present project provides essential experience at OSU and starts a national Institute at ISU (where previous Institutes have been open only to ISU faculty). The amount requested from NSF is heavily leveraged by funds from OSU, ISU, NCSU, the NABC, and universities sending participants.
