Research Ethics Fellows Program for Graduate Students

URI's proposal involves a series of bi-weekly, semester-long workshops, facilitated by three Associate Deans of the Graduate School and the Compliance Officer, and attended by 12 faculty members, 12 graduate students, and 6 practitioners from local organizations and industries, all nominated by the graduate program directors in the departments in the behavioral and biomedical sciences.

The workshops will equip participants with the conceptual tools necessary for ethical decision-making, drawing primarily upon the ethical principles of autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, and justice. Participants will be expected to generate case studies relevant to their respective fields, develop a table of contents for a training manual, develop a syllabus for departmental training, and construct assessment tools that can be used when they return to their home departments to facilitate training.

Pre- and post-tests will be used to assess the effectiveness of the workshops, and Certificates of Completion will be awarded, which will give to the holders the title of “Ethics Fellows.” The training facilitated by the Fellows when they return to their departments will be part of a new mandate from the Office of Compliance, endorsed by the Graduate Council, to require ethics training for all incoming graduate students, both at the university and departmental levels.

Assessment will consist of the pre- and post-tests administered to Fellows, pre- and post-tests of students in the departments who have received training from Fellows, and a re-administering of a survey that was used to assess RCR training needs prior to the implementation of the Fellows program. The pre- and post-tests will require participants to demonstrate proficiency in analyzing new case studies.

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