(School | Location | Principal Investigator)
Allegheny College | Meadville, PA | Oliver Bonham-Carter
While studying fields like artificial intelligence and data analytics, students will investigate potential ethical and societal challenges. For example: They might interrogate how medical data is analyzed, used, or secured. Lessons will include relevant readings, hands-on activities, and talks from experts in the field.
Bemidji State University | Bemidji, MN | Marty J. Wolf, Colleen Greer
The university will lead workshops that guide faculty at other institutions in developing and implementing responsible computer science teaching modules. The workshops will convene not just computer science faculty, but also social science and humanities faculty.
Bowdoin College | Brunswick, ME | Allison Cooper
Computer science students will participate in “ethical narratives laboratories,” where they experiment with and test the impact of technology on society. These laboratories will include transformative engagement with real and fictional narratives including case studies, science fiction readings, films, shows, and personal interviews.
Columbia University | New York, NY | Augustin Chaintreau
This approach integrates ethics directly into the computer science curriculum, rather than making it a stand-alone course. Students will consult and engage with an “ethical companion” that supplements a typical course textbook, allowing ethics to be addressed immediately alongside key concepts. The companion provides examples, case studies, and problem sets that connect ethics with topics like computer vision and algorithm design.
Georgetown University | Washington, DC | Nitin Vaidya
Georgetown’s computer science department will collaborate with the school’s Ethics Lab to create interactive experiences that illuminate how ethics and computer science interact. The goal is to introduce a series of active-learning engagements across a semester-long arc into selected courses in the computer science curriculum.
Updates and materials from Georgetown's Ethics Lab + CS department's collaboration: https://ethicslab.georgetown.edu/mozilla-grant
Georgia Institute of Technology | Atlanta, GA | Ellen Zegura
This approach embeds social responsibility into the computer science curriculum, starting with the introductory courses. Students will engage in role-playing games (RPGs) to examine how a new technology might impact the public. For example: How facial recognition or self-driving cars might affect a community.
Try Georgia Tech's new simulation activity: A City Decides On Self-Driving Buses
Harvard University | Cambridge, MA | Barbara Grosz
Harvard will expand the open-access resources of its Embedded EthiCS program which pairs computer science faculty with philosophy PhD students to develop ethical reasoning modules that are incorporated into courses throughout the computer science curriculum. Computer science postdocs will augment module development through design of activities relevant to students' future technology careers.
Miami Dade College | Miami, FL | Antonio Delgado
The college will integrate social impact projects and collaborations with local nonprofits and government agencies into the computer science curriculum. Computer science syllabi will also be updated to include ethics exercises and assignments.
Northeastern University | Boston, MA | Christo Wilson
This initiative will embed an ethics component into the university’s computer science, cybersecurity, and data science programs. The ethics component will include lectures, discussion prompts, case studies, exercises, and more. Students will also have access to a philosophy faculty advisor with expertise in information and data ethics.
Northeastern's Value Sensitive Design: https://vsd.ccs.neu.edu/
Santa Clara University | Santa Clara, CA | Sukanya Manna, Shiva Houshmand, Subramaniam Vincent
This initiative will help CS students develop a deliberative ethical analysis framework that complements their technical learning. It will develop software engineering ethics, cybersecurity ethics, and data ethics modules, with integration of case studies and projects. These modules will also be adapted into free MOOC materials, so other institutions worldwide can benefit from the curriculum.
#EthicalCS at Santa Clara University: https://www.scu.edu/ethics/focus-areas/technology-ethics/resources/what-we-are-doing-with-ethicalcs-at-santa-clara-university/
University of California, Berkeley | Berkeley, CA | James Demmel, Cathryn Carson
This initiative integrates a “Human Contexts and Ethics Toolkit” into the computer science/data science curriculum. The toolkit helps students discover when and how their work intersects with social power structures. For example: bias in data collection, privacy impacts, and algorithmic decision making.
University at Buffalo | Buffalo, NY | Atri Rudra
In this initiative, freshmen studying computer science will discuss ethics in the first-year seminar “How the internet works.” Sophomores will study responsible algorithmic development for real-world problems. Juniors will study the ethical implications of machine learning. And seniors will incorporate ethical thinking into their capstone course.
Buffalo’s Algorithms and Society: http://www-student.cse.buffalo.edu/~atri/algo-and-society/spr20/index.html
University of California, Davis | Davis, CA | Annamaria (Nina) Amenta, Gerardo Con Díaz, and Xin Liu
Computer science students will be exposed to social science and humanities while pursuing their major, culminating in a "conscientious" senior project. The project will entail developing technology while assessing its impact on inclusion, privacy, and other factors, and there will be opportunities for projects with local nonprofits or government agencies.
University of Colorado, Boulder | Boulder, CO | Casey Fiesler
This initiative integrates an ethics component into introductory programming classes, and features an “ethics fellows program” that embeds students with an interest in ethics into upper division computer science and technical classes.
University of Maryland, Baltimore County | Baltimore, MD | Helena Mentis
This initiative uses three avenues to integrate ethics into the computer science curriculum: peer discussions on how technologies might affect different populations; negative implications evaluations, i.e. “red teams” that probe the potential negative societal impacts of students’ projects; and a training program to equip teaching assistants with ethics and equality literacy.
University of Utah | Salt Lake City, UT | Suresh Venkatasubramanian, Sorelle A. Friedler (Haverford College), Seny Kamara (Brown University)
Computer science students will be encouraged to apply problem solving and critical thinking not just to design algorithms, but also the social issues that their algorithms intersect with. For example: When studying bitcoin mining algorithms, students will focus on energy usage and environmental impact. The curriculum will be developed with the help of domain experts who have expertise in sustainability, surveillance, criminal justice, and other issue areas.
Topics in Applied Cryptography: Crypto for Social Good (at Brown): http://cs.brown.edu/~seny/2950v/
Algorithm for the People (at Brown): http://cs.brown.edu/~seny/aftp/
Washington University | St. Louis, MO | Ron Cytron
Computer science students will participate in “studio sessions,” or group discussions that unpack how their technical education and skills intersect with issues like individual privacy, data security, and biased algorithms.