vol. 1...studio-based methods. Pictured here is a meeting of ‘The University as a Design Problem,’ a course co-taught by Randy Bass, PhD, and Ann Pendleton-Jullian, MArch, as

// vol. 1

CREATING NEW IMPACTS WITH ETHICS & DESIGN

KENNEDY INSTITUTE OF ETHICS

GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY

The work of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics and Ethics Lab was made possible by gifts of time and wisdom from the Institute’s Regents Committee and others, including generous donations from the following benefactors:

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Kathleen McNamara Hugin, C’82, and Robert Hugin

Marie Hurabiell, C’92

Nancy D. Joyce, SLL’74

Lucy Rooney Kapples, C’83, and Jack Kapples

Edmund Kwan, M’87, and Susan Kwan

Mary Poland

Helen and Russell Pyne

Brian Rafferty, C’79, and Helen Rafferty

Chandler and Paul Tagliabue, C’62

David Wehner, C’90, and Gabrielle Wehner

KENNEDY INSTITUTE OF ETHICS

The Kennedy Institute of Ethics (KIE) is a center for practically engaged ethics at Georgetown University. Our founding scholars helped to invent the field of bio-ethics from the ground up, and we strive to carry on that tradition of creative leadership today through world-class research, teaching, public service, and a spirit of continuous experimentation. We see Ethics Lab’s work as part of the 21st century realization of this inventive spirit and commitment to real-world impact.

We bring together ethics & design to develop innovative methods for approaching complex moral problems.

Ethics Lab is a design lab at Georgetown University’s Kennedy Institute of Ethics that uses ethics and design to find innovative ways to approach complex moral problems. Our character-based ethics learning works to educate women and men for others, and our direct- impact work aims to make a difference in the world beyond the gates.

ETHICS LAB

INTRODUCTION

WAYS OF WORKING

FLAGSHIP COURSES

INFUSION ACROSS

GEORGETOWN

… AND BEYOND

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INTRODUCTION

The world we now inhabit is shaped by tremendous forces of innovation and disruption. Whether we’re looking at gene editing or big data, we are clearly in a moment where our ethics—our collective capacity to identify, reason about, and act on the basis of moral implications—is lagging our technical capacity. There’s every reason to think that this gap will only grow in the years to come, as tectonic forces such as globalization, climate change, and the rise of artificial intelligence make and remake the world we inhabit at an ever-faster rate and an ever-larger scale.

This widening gap set the context for the founding of Ethics Lab by the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University in early 2012. Building on the Institute’s long and storied history of scholars working for the common good, the Lab brings design into the mix to complement, enrich, and extend exist-ing progress on complex issues ranging from personal genomics to climate refugees. A nimble way of working

and a culture of continuous innovation borrowed from the world of design allow the Lab to pivot quickly when new moral crises arise; to prototype, test, and iterate mul-tiple versions of the same project or teaching method; to find unusual intervention points in old problems or creative ways to scale successful experiments.

The Lab’s founding years reflect this culture of experi-mentation. Our experiments have focused and refined our understanding of what universities like George-town, ethics centers like the Institute, and design hubs like the Lab have to offer an ever-changing world. Our efforts can be loosely grouped into two broad modes of intervention.

The first area of effort is direct-impact work. The Lab is a critical partner in the Institute’s ongoing work advising policymakers and industry partners on emerg-ing, fast-moving crises like the Zika epidemic and the rise of fake news, as well as central to its work to engage the public and convene conversations on issues such as disability studies and medical error. New tools, poli-cies, and frameworks are needed to reckon with new

2 // INTRODUCTION

moral challenges like these. Our consulting, advising, and engagement work has involved creative workshops for HIV/AIDS researchers seeking more ethical and impactful clinical research protocols, and assisting Vet-erans’ Services staff across Georgetown to improve the level of support they offer military-affiliated students.

A complex world also needs citizens and leaders who are equipped to grapple with moral issues that develop five, ten, twenty-five years down the line—moral issues we can’t possibly anticipate from our current vantage point.

To do so, students need not just knowledge, but moral skills and moral character.

INTRODUCTION // 3

Moral understanding is critical to grappling with any complex moral problem. Individuals and groups must be able to reach for the moral language—‘privacy,’ ‘exploitation,’ ‘reparation,’ ‘justice’—to describe and ana-lyze a situation. They must be able not only to identify stakeholders, but to empathize with and articulate their perspectives.

As important as understanding is, it means nothing if individuals lack the capacity to do something about the problem they confront. Moral citizens and leaders need to develop the capacity for creative initiative—to use collaboration and moral imagination to find and forge pathways where none yet exist.

Finally, a capacity for action in uncertain times, even when based on careful ethical understanding, is use-less without the courage to take a stand, or take the first step—and can be dangerous if deployed without moral integrity. This final area of ethical character

4 // INTRODUCTION

development aims at building the moral conscience and resilience needed to make an unpopular choice for the sake of what’s right.

That’s why our second major area of ongoing effort is transformative ethics education for students at Georgetown and beyond. Inspired by the university’s Jesuit commitment to educate women and men for others, our novel approach to applied ethics education merges robust ethical theory with tools of active learn-ing drawn from the world of design thinking. Ethics and design both seek to make progress on complex issues by embracing ambiguity, envisioning alternate possibilities, fostering collaboration, and testing new ideas for their feasibility to make a lasting positive impact. Harnessing the tools of each discipline helps bring ethical issues alive, and helps students become part of the solution.

Our educational efforts include flagship courses— ethics-rich, project-based classes that take advantage of the Lab’s space, ethics experts, and mentors. Ethics Lab also works to infuse ethics into existing courses at Georgetown: hosting workshops, designing ethics modules for other courses, and sharing tools that faculty can use to highlight ethical issues in their subject area, whether it’s international affairs or chemistry. Beyond the gates, we run professional development sessions

INTRODUCTION // 5

aimed at educators from middle school to graduate programs, and consult with partners in the high school, undergraduate, graduate, and continuing professional education space to develop high-impact ethics learning that makes sense for their programs. In this way, we work to train the next generation of moral citizens and leaders.

In this volume, we share examples from the past three years of ethics learning and our design-influenced teaching, highlights from our direct impact work, and what’s on the horizon for our next phase of evolution and growth.

6 // INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION // 7

650BOOKS

in the Lab library

to Lab events between 2014–2017

VISITORS1,632

POST-ITS68,357

put to good use between 2014–2017

14 // WAYS OF WORKING

In Ethics Lab, we have developed a method that com-bines the tools of design thinking and philosophical ethics to cultivate moral leadership and address ethical problems. Using tools and exercises adapted from the world of design, we help people learn to discern and understand the fundamental moral values at stake in contemporary issues, and challenge them to think cre-atively as they envision solutions and alternate courses of action.

WAYS OF WORKING

Problem-based learning

Ethics Lab courses take a practical approach to applied ethics, tackling complex contemporary moral problems using a mix of philosophical tools and design thinking. The goal is to help students identify ethical issues and make progress in addressing them.

We invite industry leaders and other experts to dis-cuss their experiences and explore challenges with our students. In the Lab, traditional methods like reading, writing, and analysis are combined with collaborative design methods like empathy mapping, stakeholder research, and iterating proposed solutions.

In our flagship courses, we challenge students to pro-pose actionable solutions that add value to the world. Through the process of envisioning possibilities to enact real and lasting change, students develop a deeper level of moral understanding than they can achieve learning core theoretical distinctions in isolation. They are able to put ethics into action, cultivating their ability to be moral citizens and leaders.


“Being forced to take our efforts seriously, not just as students trying to do well in a class but as real people solving a real problem, was invaluable.”

Caitlin Meager, Ethics Lab Student

WAYS OF WORKING // 17


Read more about Ethics Lab’s Empathy Mapping Toolkit on page 64. >>

Innovative teaching tools

Our method merges the tools of design thinking with ethical theory to help build real-world ethics skills.

A key example is the work we do to help students build empathy and see differently—an important part of moral thinking. In our experience, tools from the world of design thinking can be adapted to the examination of moral issues. This approach encourages nonlinear think-ing, increases empathy, and pushes learners toward deep and authentic engagement with the granular details of a given situation or problem area. In this way, we encour-age real growth.

One example of a tool we’ve adapted for use in a wide variety of classroom settings is ‘empathy map-ping.’ An empathy map is used to help people gain a deeper understanding of another person’s perspective by asking students to consider what a real individual in a real situation (described in detail) might see, think, hear, feel, and say. This tool can be used with a wide array of prompts, and it challenges the student to consider the perspective of someone very different from themselves.

<< Opposite: Reactions to an empathy mapping prompt—Students reviewed a medical consent form for a clinical trial that may help treat baldness from the perspective of a potential participant.



Exporting our creative approach

The tools we’ve developed in Ethics Lab to help stu-dents envision new solutions for seemingly intractable problems have also been successfully used to unstick problems for stakeholders across the university.

Ethics Lab across the University

Ethics Lab is working with faculty, programs, and schools to export what we have learned across the uni-versity. We’ve begun an initiative to work with faculty in different disciplines to incentivize and scaffold the use of creative ethics approaches in their classes. We have worked with the School of Continuing Studies and the McDonough School of Business to enhance ethics education at Georgetown. We also recently engaged as consultants with Georgetown’s student service units to elicit their best thinking and planning on how to improve services to veterans and military-affiliated students.

Ethics Lab in the World

Ethics Lab has designed and delivered teacher training sessions to export creative design-based ethics to high-school teachers. In addition, we are developing products that will make it easier for teachers to unbox, experience, and adopt our methods with their students, even if they can’t come to the Lab to be trained.


The Lab also provides space to selected classes that use studio-based methods. Pictured here is a meeting of ‘The University as a Design Problem,’ a course co-taught by Randy Bass, PhD, and Ann Pendleton-Jullian, MArch, as part of the Designing the Future(s) of the University initiative at the Red House.

“When you go to Ethics Lab, you

don’t go to class, you go to change

the world.”

Nandini Mullaji, Student, Fall 2014

24 // FLAGSHIP COURSES

In Ethics Lab’s flagship courses, students tackle some of our society’s most pressing ethical issues in a format that combines deep theory with active, team-based projects. Meeting in the Lab throughout the semes-ter, students work intensely. Traditional lectures, guest speakers, and readings are supplemented with inventive exercises designed to integrate reflection and character development; students culminate the semester with col-laborative team projects aimed at human progress.

The aim of Flagship courses is to help students grow in their understanding of ethics and human value, and to wrestle with critical, real-world issues to help develop them as moral citizens and leaders.

FLAGSHIP COURSES

BIOETHICS

Introduction to Bioethics // PHIL–105

Semester: Fall 2014 Instructors: Maggie Little, PhD; Arjun Dhillon

This course introduced students to the world of bioeth-ics—a field that explores moral issues around health, the environment, and emerging technologies. Specific topics included vulnerability and autonomy in the face of illness, genomic sequencing and engineering, and clinical research ethics, with guest speakers who brought real-world problems into the classroom for students to tackle.

Spencer Wells, a geneticist and documentary film-maker at National Geographic, worked with students to develop a protocol for truly informed consent to have their own genomes sequenced. Jason Campagna, a pharmaceutical company executive, worked with stu-dents on a very real puzzle: how to conduct morally sound research on medical treatments for preeclamp-sia, a condition of pregnancy that is one of the leading causes of maternal mortality worldwide.


Above right: After exploring the ethical complexities brought by the rise in personal genomic testing, students were given the opportunity to sequence their own genome using a popular direct-to-consumer genetic testing kit. Rather than simply theorizing about the promise and perils of genetic knowledge, students were confronted with a real-life, real-stakes choice: take the test or no? In the end, 18 students chose to sequence their genomes—some with caveats or restrictions—and two chose to abstain.

FLAGSHIP COURSES // 27

BIOETHICS, SCIENCE,RHETORIC

STUDIO COLLABORATIVE

Introduction to Bioethics // PHIL–105 Shaping National Science Policy // BIOL–262 Introduction to Rhetoric // ENGL–286

Semester: Spring 2015 Instructors: Maggie Little, PhD; Francis Slakey, PhD; David Goldston, PhD; Matt Pavesich, PhD; Arjun Dhillon

This course piloted a new curricular structure for Georgetown: the opportunity for classes from different disciplines to join in a collaborative studio to enable genuinely interdisciplinary, project-based work. By con-necting classes that share fundamental issues, the aim was to create a multiplier effect. Deeper learning occurs when students from different disciplines collaborate with each other on authentic projects aimed at making real-world change.

This collaborative brought together students from three classes: bioethics, science advocacy, and communication. Students brought the knowledge, theory, and tools learned from their home class into interdisciplinary project teams to fashion products for the public good.


Working in their interdisciplinary teams, students tack-led issues from four perspectives. Some teams worked to make change through channels of federal, state, or local governance. Others were charged to develop a solution for a specific organization—an NGO, profes-sional organization, or industry. Still others worked to develop something of use to the ‘polis’—the general public—with the goal of moving people on the ground to action. Finally, some teams were encouraged to take an open-ended approach to allow for more experimen-tal methods and emergent outcomes. Final projects included an art installation raising awareness about per-sonal genomics, a pledge-based campaign to eliminate disposable water bottles on Georgetown’s campus, and provocative new packaging for antibiotics encouraging adherence to prescribed dosing in order to reduce anti-biotic resistance.

Read about one student’s studio experience on the following page. >>

Above: Student-designed antibiotic packaging encourages patients to finish their full prescriptions, thereby reducing antibiotic resistance.


Valeria Balza (SFS ’18) was part of the Spring 2015 Ethics Lab Studio Collaborative whose team explored the layers of ethical, scientific, political, and social complexity tangled up with the increasingly sophisticated technology around personal genomics. Her team sourced work from profes-sional artists whose portfolios engaged themes of privacy and genetic determinism, and created a series of original pieces of their own.

EL: Why did your group choose this issue and what

challenges did you face?

VB: After discussing several issues, [we] found personal genomics to be a very important yet scarily vague issue. Because the field is so vague and not very recognizable to the public, we faced challenges in gathering infor-mation and in making it accessible to everyone else. We chose art as a way to span this gap in public knowledge.

ETHICS LAB STUDENT INTERVIEW


A series of photographic collages created by Valeria Balza (SFS ’18) and team depicts social interference and overreach on the basis of public genetic data.

EL: What impact did the class and the work you accom-

plished in the Lab have on your design perspective?

VB: I learned the easy way is not necessarily the best way, especially after many of our initial ideas were rejected. I realized design is about trial and error until you find the ultimate product —and even then the product is constantly in the process of being edited and improved.


SCIENCE & SOCIETY

Science & Society: Global Challenges // BIOL–261

Semester: Fall 2015 Instructors: Francis Slakey, PhD; Allyson Anderson, MS; Arjun Dhillon

This course introduced students to some of the most significant and complex science, business, and ethical challenges of our time, including meeting a growing global energy demand, reducing carbon emissions, managing a global pandemic, and containing the spread of weapons of mass destruction. Guest speak-ers—including scientists, venture capitalists, business leaders, congressional staff, and journalists—examined the science, business, politics, and public perceptions surrounding these challenges. Throughout the semester, student groups selected a ‘global challenge,’ researched the science and technology, and proposed options to make positive progress with an emphasis on creative, actionable, and entrepreneurial solutions.

Student projects included: interactive placemats for ele-mentary schoolers with facts and games about healthy eating; a care package delivery service for sick Hoyas to encourage them to stay home and stop the spread of contagious illness; and a proposal to educate and solicit organ donor sign-ups from incoming college students.


One team took on the problem of how to raise awareness of the growing environmental threat posed by invasive species and created The Invasive Hitlist: Snakehead, a field guide designed to create a culture of ecologically responsible recreation. This guide centered on designing an innovative response to combat the growing popu-lation of invasive Northern Snakehead in the rivers surrounding Washington, DC. Over 2,000 copies of the guide, produced in-house by the students, were distributed with the support of the Bureau of Land Management, Fisheries for Veterans, and all members of the Aquatic Nuisance Species Task Force to pilot a new approach to their public awareness campaigns.

“After reviewing previous approaches to invasive species, we chose to write the book in a humorous narrative tone that is engaging without being overly simplistic. … [The] field guides are waterproof and elegantly hand-bound, to encourage anglers to take them on fishing trips. In our nar-rative, we take the reader on a journey through the entire fishing process; we describe everything from what bait to use to how to report their catch to the recipes that comple-ment snakehead meat.”

Caitlin Cleary, Andrew Green, Noah Martin, Caitlin Tompkins


Shaping National Science Policy // BIOL–262 Introduction to Rhetoric // ENGL–286

Semester: Spring 2016 Instructors: Francis Slakey, PhD; David Goldston, PhD; Matt Pavesich, PhD; Arjun Dhillon

This seminar involved another collaboration between classes—this time classes on science advocacy and com-munication. Students were asked to work together on authentic problems involving public policy, science, and rhetoric, and to take action on important civic issues.

Students pursued legislative and non-legislative routes to creating change in the science and public policy space. Projects included: a new approach to reducing opioid prescription drug abuse; an approach for more equitable treatment of transgender people in health-care; a shadowing program for pre-med students from low-income backgrounds; and labeling for genetical-ly-modified foods highlighting the positive aspects of this technological advance.

SCIENCE & RHETORIC

Opposite: Students began exercising their creative muscles with a mini-design project that challenged them to “create an American map without using any geographic elements.” The results ranged from an all-American diner menu to a powerful infographic on gun violence deaths.

>>



Data Ethics // PHIL–108

Semester: Spring 2017, Fall 2017 Instructors: Maggie Little, PhD; Elizabeth Edenberg, PhD (S17) // Elizabeth Edenberg, PhD; Jonathan Healey, MArch (F17)

This course explores the rapidly changing landscape of data ethics. Big data is revolutionizing practices in commerce, education, policing, national security, and medicine. Rapid advances in machine learning and ar-tificial intelligence ensure that the pace and scope of change will only accelerate, even as ethical and legal frameworks lag far behind. Developing adequate eth-ical frameworks involves tackling difficult questions. How can big data be used for the public good? Does the use of predictive analytics in employment and policing decisions reduce or reinforce bias? Is privacy dead —and should we care? What does truth mean in the age of information bubbles?

DATA ETHICS


Georgetown’s Chief Information Officer, Judd Nicholson, partnered with the Spring 2017 version of this course, and asked students to advise on best practices for Georgetown’s own policy on use of student data, based on Jesuit values. Students consulted with stakeholders across Georgetown, from the administration to students, and heard from a variety of guest speakers ranging from Georgetown Law Center scholars to Silicon Valley insiders. Projects includ-ed creating educational games to introduce data ethics to incoming students and creating an advisory board to pro-vide ongoing input into decisions about Georgetown’s use of student data.

This course was made possible through the passion and industry insight of Bill Ericson, F’82.

Opposite, left: Students in the Data Ethics class used stake-holder mapping to identify relationships between university administrators and student data.

Opposite, right: Hoya Data is a board game that generates insights about the ethical issues at stake in data use, storage, and consumption at Georgetown.

<<

Guest jurors critique Ethics Lab students’ proposals for raising awareness about data ethics on campus.


Social Media & Democracy // PHIL–110

Semester: Fall 2017 Instructors: Maggie Little, PhD; Jonathan Healey, MArch

The internet has radically changed the way people develop world views and engage in political conver-sation—in ways both good and bad. Social media has expanded opportunities for political voice to people who previously lacked it. But the effects of targeted newsfeeds and self-selection have created information bubbles and echo chambers that have vastly increased polarization and suspicion of those with different views. Is divided democracy inevitable or are there means for maintaining a robust republic in the digital age? How do we assess what counts as truth and expertise? What makes something propaganda rather than an unpopu-lar opinion? Using current examples from the U.S. and global political conversations, this course will examine questions of truth and democratic ideals in the age of social media.

SOCIAL MEDIA & DEMOCRACY


In addition to exploring the philosophical theories of manipulation and deceit, students will engage in map-ping exercises of various news outlets and Facebook feeds from across the political spectrum to identify markers of bias, clickbait marketing, and fallacy. The final project will be an ‘ethics in action’ challenge, in which students work collaboratively to develop ideas for fostering civil discourse across political divides.

This course was made possible through the investment and thought partnership of David and Gabrielle Wehner.


Climate Change & Global Justice // PHIL–129

Semester: Spring 2018 Instructors: Elizabeth Edenberg, PhD; Jonathan Healey, MArch

Addressing the ramifications of climate change, already challenging, is made far more complex by its intersec-tion with issues of global justice. Global inequalities impact the way people are affected by climate change, and raise profoundly difficult questions about how to distribute responsibilities for reducing carbon emis-sions. Assessing policy for mitigating climate change also raises challenging questions of intergenerational justice: how do we balance the needs of the global poor now with the needs of future generations?

CLIMATE CHANGE & GLOBAL JUSTICE

Opposite: As part of the 2017–18 Core Pathways planning process, instructors used content worksheets provided by Ethics Lab to document their disciplinary perspectives on addressing climate change.

>>


This course will be part of the new Core Pathways Ini-tiative at Georgetown University. An undertaking of the Red House’s Future(s) initiative, Core Pathways offers students the opportunity to complete their core requirements—in ethics, writing, science, theology, and beyond—as part of a collaborative cohort that joins the courses together on a common challenge. The theme for 2017–18 is Climate Change. The Ethics Lab class will provide a deep dive into the philosophical and eth-ical issues on the theme. In addition, Ethics Lab will provide two immersive ‘integrative ethics days’ for the approximately 100 students in the Pathway, to ensure that every student confronts climate change as a com-plex moral problem for contemporary society.


American Studies

Art History

Biology

Biology of Global Health

Biomedical Science Policy & Advocacy

Business Administration (EMBA)

Computer Science

Economics

Finance

French

Global Business

Government

Healthcare Management & Policy

History

Human Science

Interdisciplinary Studies

International Affairs

International Business & Policy (MA)

International Economics

International Health

International Political Economy

Justice & Peace Studies

Liberal Studies

Linguistics

Management

Marketing

Mathematics

Nursing

Physics

Neurophysiology

Operations & Information Management

Philosophy

Political Economy

Psychology

Regional & Comparative Studies

Science, Technology, & International Affairs

Women’s & Gender Studies

ETHICS LAB STUDENT MAJORS

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44 // INFUSION ACROSS GEORGETOWN

INFUSION ACROSS GEORGETOWN

In addition to running flagship courses inside the Lab, Ethics Lab helps build exercises, tools, and modules for courses around Georgetown. We craft learning experi-ences that embody the university’s Jesuit commitment to educating the whole person, fostering women and men for others who adapt and thrive as they enter the real world with an eye to the common good. As we’ve tested and validated new approaches, a major focus of our work has been to support the infusion of meaning-ful ethics education across the Georgetown curriculum.

INCENTIVIZING & EXPORTING NEW APPROACHES TO ETHICS EDUCATION

Ethical issues arise in courses across the curriculum, not just in philosophy and theology classes. But it can be challenging to integrate ethical discussions into an already crowded syllabus. Ethics Lab’s tools for active learning can help students explore ethical issues in courses across the university, and the team is actively working to share successful approaches with fellow educators at Georgetown. Through the generosity of Chandler and Paul Tagliabue (C’62), Ethics Lab part-nered with the Georgetown Learning Initiative, headed by Assoc. Provost for Education Randy Bass, to launch the Engaging Ethics Initiative in 2017. This program provides concrete incentives and support for faculty across Georgetown to import inventive ways of high-lighting ethics in their classes.


WATER // INAF–100

Semester: Fall 2017 Professor: Mark Giordano, PhD

This proseminar for freshmen at Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service (SFS) examines how the physical properties of water interact with social and political structures to make global water management politi-cally and ethically challenging. Working with the Lab team, students will use persona building and empathy mapping exercises to explore the moral dimension of a specific global water challenge from a variety of stake-holder perspectives.

INFUSION ACROSS GEORGETOWN // 47

“The environment is a natural topic for intersecting disciplines, but one doesn’t often get to mix chemistry with ethics.”

Professor Sarah Stoll, PhD Engaging Ethics Initiative award recipient


ENVIRONMENTAL CHEMISTRY // CHEM–020 Semester: Fall 2017 Professor: Sarah Stoll, PhD

This course explores the underlying chemistry of the environment by engaging with critical issues around energy, water, and pollution. Throughout the semes-ter, students will experience three intensive ethics touchpoints on moral responsibility and social justice facilitated by Ethics Lab.


TLISI (Teaching, Learning, and Innovation Summer Institute)

Each year, Georgetown’s Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship (CNDLS) hosts a summer institute where instructors from around the university share innovative strategies for teaching and learning. In 2017, Ethics Lab team members offered a session entitled ‘Empathy Mapping: A Powerful Tool for Exploring Diverse Perspectives’ that enrolled over 50 faculty participants. The session led instructors through an exercise focused on political division in contempo-rary American society utilizing the Lab’s proprietary empathy mapping kits, and offered tips for integrating this unique tool for ethics learning into their courses at Georgetown.



Partnering with individual faculty to infuse creative ethics learning in their classes is a ‘bottom-up’ approach to impacting ethics education at Georgetown. We also work at the systems level, with ‘top-down’ strategies that involve partnering with leaders at Georgetown to rethink their ethics education at the program level. These complementary strategies offer a resilient approach to enduring change at the university.

BUILDING SIGNATURE ETHICS EDUCATION WITH PARTNERS ACROSS THE SCHOOLS




SCHOOL OF CONTINUING STUDIES

Busy working professionals enrolled in one of George-town’s 17 current and pending Masters of Professional Studies programs always receive instruction in practi-cal ethical issues related to their work, whether they’re studying real estate, journalism, or sports management. In Spring 2017, Georgetown’s School of Continuing Studies engaged Lab team members to facilitate a series of collaborative workshops with their faculty and pro-gram leadership. The team provided recommendations for enriching, expanding, and deepening the school’s ethics curriculum, recasting it as a unifying experience of best-in-class ethics education.


MCDONOUGH SCHOOL OF BUSINESS

How can Georgetown prepare business students to lead organizations with moral courage and integrity through the unpredictable challenges of a fast-changing, globally connected world? In Spring 2017, the Ethics Lab team partnered with various programs and faculty across the School of Business to infuse creative ethics content into core degree courses. The collaborations connected design methods to Ignatian ideals of reflec-tive action and moral character. For example, we led graduate students from the International Business and Policy program through an interactive workshop tai-lored specifically to the central themes of their program: international relations and contemporary issues in global business. Students learned to approach complex problems through empathy with alternative perspec-tives, awareness of their networked impact on the world, and responsible solutions informed by a deep sense of justice and integrity.



58 // … AND BEYOND

… AND BEYOND

Through initiatives aimed at learners outside the university, Ethics Lab seeks to share its creative, experiential approach to ethics education with the wider world. Our teaching efforts have reached middle- and high-school students all the way through to advanced professionals. Our workshops, partnerships, training sessions, and educational products aim to help other educators integrate Ethics Lab methods into their home classrooms.

Professionals in medicine, law, and technology are often on the front lines of emerging ethical issues, and must frequently work to square professional expectations and personal commitments in a complex regulatory envi-ronment. The Lab’s hands-on approach to real-world moral issues has proven to be a good match for pro-fessional and continuing education on such issues. In 2015 and 2016, Ethics Lab offered design workshops on research ethics for clinical researchers and other profes-sionals whose work brings them face-to-face with moral issues in medical research. Delivered as post-sessions to the KIE’s annual summer Intensive Bioethics Course, the full-day workshops used design-based inquiry to explore problem contexts and scenarios drawn from real cases. Participants used empathy maps to articulate issues in informed consent, prototyped a tactile deci-sion aid for enrollment in two different types of clinical trials, and discussed research exploitation and coercion in resource-poor settings.

REACHING PROFESSIONALS


… AND BEYOND // 61

High-school students from Kent Place and Trinity Hall schools spent a weekend in Ethics Lab exploring ethical issues concerning food insecurity.


HIGH SCHOOL

Ethics Lab has hosted over 100 high-school students in ethics workshops since its founding, and has facili-tated several off-site programs at high schools on the East Coast. These engagements included: a year-long partnership with The Kent Place School and Trinity Hall School (New Jersey); half-day visits by the Barrie School (Maryland) and Episcopal Collegiate School (Arkansas); participation in Georgetown Day School’s (Washington, DC) STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and math) conference that brought students and faculty from DC-area schools together to discuss and participate in STEAM education; and a series of workshops for high-school students participat-ing in the university’s ‘Summer at Georgetown.’

In addition to these projects prepared for high-school students, the Lab has also worked to reach high-school educators directly through a series of multi-day profes-sional development workshops. We’ve also developed a line of ethics toolkits designed for use in middle- and high-school classrooms.


TOOLKITS FOR TEACHERS

As part of the Lab’s growth, we are pursuing new ave-nues to spread our innovative ways of teaching. To that end, we assembled a team of designers and PhD phi-losophers to create a suite of toolkits that pair ethics topics with design methods. The kits enable teachers to facilitate a discrete activity in their own classrooms without prior expertise in ethics or design. The Empa-thy Mapping Toolkit is our first product which exports the experiences we provide in classes at Georgetown to a broader audience.

In this toolkit, teachers receive all the materials neces-sary to lead their students through an empathy mapping exercise aimed at deepening their understanding of the ethical issues surrounding informed consent. The kit includes curriculum documents, scenario cards, sample consent forms, custom acrylic stencils—and of course markers and sticky notes. The included instructions provide a step-by-step guide to lead students through role-playing scenarios that put them in the place of a patient whose consent is required for a medical intervention.


For more information or to purchase, visit:

KITS.ETHICSLAB.ORG


a) Curriculum Documents Background subject-area content on the ethics issues involved, plus a crash course in this design tool:

• toolkit overview• ethics learning goals• overview of key ethics concepts• background on clinical trials• introduction to empathy mapping• activity and discussion instructions• scenario comparison

quick reference guide

b) Scenario Cards for 3 Scenarios Put yourself in someone else’s shoes with these scenarios that capture a range of medical situations.

c) Consent Forms for 3 Scenarios Adapted from real consent forms, these documents pair with the scenarios to complete students’ role-playing.

TOOLKIT COMPONENTS

a b

c

d) 2 Acrylic Stencils Don’t think you can draw a silhouette? No problem! Just trace these heads onto a whiteboard or large paper.

e) Permanent Markers Don’t edit yourself —get those ideas out in a bold way!

f) Whiteboard Markers Just in case you don’t want to permanently trace those heads onto your whiteboard…

g) Sticky Notes Their small size is perfect for capturing big ideas. Make them stick!

h)...and Ethics Lab Stickers! Need we say more?

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70 // ON THE HORIZON

The future in Ethics Lab promises experimentation, development of the model, and increasing collaboration.

Here are some of the questions driving our work:

>> In our teaching, we are focused on development of our method. Can virtues of character such as empathy, resilience, and patience, be developed through engaged ethics education?

>> In our research, we are asking how best to engage academics in disciplines beyond philosophy and design to ensure that the work of Ethics Lab incorporates the ethical insights from the social sciences and experimen-tal methods of the sciences.

ON THE HORIZON

>> In our outreach, we are eager to infuse our model into the broad context of design thinking to ensure that ethical considerations always play a role in user cen-tered solutions design.

We invite engagement with partners in non-profits and industry to create paths through difficult but dis-crete ethical challenges with the goal of developing and enhancing organizational core values and reinforcing individuals’ capacity for ethical leadership.

We welcome expressions of interest in collaboration from other academic institutions, non-profits and industry, and opportunities for support through grants and philanthropic investment.

72 // ON THE HORIZON

ON THE HORIZON // 73

“Ethics Lab changed the way I learned, the way I thought;

it changed who I am, and who I want to be.”

Nandini Mullaji, Student, Fall 2014

76 // PEOPLE

PEOPLE

Many people have contributed to the Lab’s wide port-folio of work in its founding years. Students, faculty, university leaders, and philanthropic partners have made these many experiments, successes, and learning experiences possible. We are immensely grateful for the intellectual, material, and strategic support that has made these early years possible. We extend a special thank you to Kathy and Robert Hugin for their extraor-dinary generosity in support of the Ethics Lab mission and space.

Maggie Little PhD, Director, Senior Research Scholar, Professor of Philosophy

Cindy Chance PhD, Managing Director

Jonathan Healey MArch, Assistant Professor of the Practice, Assistant Director of Ethics Lab

Elizabeth Edenberg PhD, Postdoctoral Fellow

Kelly Heuer PhD, Head of Curricular and Visual Design

Laura Bishop PhD, Associate Teaching Professor, Academic Program Manager

Nico Staple Senior Product Designer

RESEARCH, TEACHING, & DESIGN TEAM

78 // PEOPLE

TEAM ALUMNI

Arjun Dhillon Assistant Professor of the Practice, Assistant Director of Ethics Lab

Jesse Flores Studio Fellow

Marisha Wickremsinhe MSc, Design Fellow

Audre HyattDesign Fellow

Justin Lillge Design Fellow

Noah Martin Design Fellow

PEOPLE // 79

TEACHING PARTNERS & GUEST SPEAKERS

Special thanks to our teaching partners, guest speakers, and jury members, especially:

Allyson Anderson, MS, Energy Scholar, Science in the Public Interest, Georgetown University

Evan Barba, PhD, MS, Assistant Professor, Communication, Culture, and Technology, Georgetown University

Randy Bass, PhD, MA, Vice Provost for Education and Professor of English, Georgetown University

Annamarie Bianco, Phd, MSEd, Associate Vice President and University Registrar, Georgetown University

Jason Campagna, MD, PhD, Scholar-in-Residence (2014–2016)

Jake Earl, PhD, Critique Juror

Quentin Fisher, PhD Candidate in Philosophy, Georgetown University

Esther Kim, Critique Juror and Student Project Mentor

Mary Beth Connell, MD, M‘89, Critique Juror

80 // PEOPLE

Bill Ericson, JD, Founding Partner, Wildcat Venture Partners

David Goldston, PhD, Energy Policy Scholar, Science in the Public Interest, Georgetown University

Colin Hickey, PhD Candidate in Philosophy, Georgetown University, Critique Juror

Hailey Huget, PhD Candidate in Philosophy, Georgetown University

Scott Johnson, MD, Chief Medical Advisor, The Medicines Company

Meg Jones, PhD, JD, Assistant Professor, Communication, Culture and Technology, Georgetown University

Eddie Maloney, PhD, MA, Executive Director of CNDLS, Professor of the Practice, English, Georgetown University

Christofer Nelson, Program Director, Science in the Public Interest, Georgetown University

Judd Nicholson, MPS, Vice President and Chief Information Officer, Georgetown University

PEOPLE // 81

Kobbi Nissim, PhD, MS, Professor of Computer Science, Georgetown University

Paul Ohm, JD, Professor of Law and Faculty Director for the Center on Privacy and Technology, Georgetown University Law Center

J.R. Osborn, PhD, MA, Assistant Professor, Communication, Culture, and Technology, Georgetown University, Critique Juror

Matt Pavesich, PhD, Associate Teaching Professor of English and Associate Director of the Writing Program, Georgetown University

Ann Pendleton-Jullian, MArch, Distinguished Visiting Professor (2014), Georgetown University

Francis Slakey, PhD, Upjohn Lecturer on Physics and Public Policy, Georgetown University

Taylor Stone, MA, Ethics Lab Visiting Researcher (2017), PhD Candidate in Philosophy of Technology, Delft University of Technology, Critique Juror

Robert Veatch, PhD, Senior Research Scholar, Professor Emeritus of Medical Ethics, Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Georgetown University

Spencer Wells, PhD, Scholar-in-Residence (2014–2015)

TEACHING PARTNERS & GUEST SPEAKERS (CONT.)

82 // PEOPLE

Product of Ethics Lab Book design by Sydney M. Luken

© 2017 Kennedy Institute of Ethics. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

1st printing

Ethics LabHealy Hall 201Georgetown University3700 O St NWWashington, DC 20057

KENNEDY INSTITUTE OF ETHICS // GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY

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