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Undergraduate Research Ethics Cases
The three cases on this University of Delaware website explore several ethical issues and situations that undergraduates might encounter as they make the transition from the classroom laboratory to the research laboratory. In “Tripped Up,” a skit in which students take roles, an undergraduate discovers that his results are too “hot” for public consumption and is told that he cannot present his research abstract at a national meeting because his professor—concerned about competition from another lab—wants to publish the complete results first. After watching the skit without interruption, students ask ethics questions of the student actors, who remain in character as they improvise their answers. In “Helping Hand?” a graduate student advises an undergraduate, who has little time to write a proposal for summer research funding, to copy parts of her research supervisor’s recent grant proposal into her application. The review committee deliberates on whether to fund her proposal. The case study contains useful questions to ask when thinking through an ethical dilemma. In “Organic Reactions,” an undergraduate discovers that the project she has been working on is being published without her name because her research supervisor thinks her contributions do not merit coauthorship. The case presents both the undergraduate’s and the professor’s points of view and includes questions to consider. The website also has links to useful resources for teaching ethics.
Undergraduate Research Ethics Cases
Undergraduate researchers can grapple with the ethical issues that are explored in the three case studies on this website.
Program Director: Harold B. White III, Ph.D.
Award Years: 1992, 1998, 2002, 2006
Summary: The University of Delaware is a public research university in Newark, Delaware. Its HHMI-funded initiatives include:
- The establishment of a Quantitative Biology Major in the Mathematics Department—the only Bio-Math program in the country that is offered as a degree program in a department of mathematics;
- A summer undergraduate research scholar program, which includes a weekly interdisciplinary enrichment program devoted to research science topics such as ethics and gender issues;
- A Network of Undergraduate Collaborative Learning Experiences for Underrepresented Scholars (NUCLEUS) program, which provides the support necessary for underrepresented students to successfully continue their education beyond the baccalaureate degree; and
- Programs to train new, current and future faculty in the use of Problem-Based Learning (PBL) through the university's Institute for Transforming Undergraduate Education and through pedagogy courses for undergraduate PBL group facilitators and graduate teaching assistants.