Integrating Engagement with Research Ethics in Graduate Education
Educating students about the ideas and methods of public engagement has largely focused on undergraduates. With that movement well underway, the focus should shift to graduate students. This is a challenging prospect, because most graduate students - with the strong encouragement of their faculty advisors - concentrate on their disciplinary studies and research. However, there are many reasons to pursue the challenge. Graduate students have said that they want to know more about the public aspects of their disciplines. In some fields, research cannot be done well without collaboration with community partners. Experience with community partnerships can help students get jobs outside academia or in non-Research 1 universities. And attention to the public implications of scholarship will enhance public support for research universities.
Public engagement should become part of the responsible conduct of research (RCR) or research ethics training that our institutions now give to our graduate students. Discipline-specific public engagement content would enrich RCR training, making it less legalistic and more connected to broader societal concerns. Ethical aspects of publicly engaged research include IRB issues, formulating and publishing research in ways meaningful to community partners, and compensating partners for their time and effort.
In order to encourage the inclusion of public engagement with research ethics, it will be important to develop and disseminate suitable pedagogical material tailored to disciplinary specialties. Developing such material could be a scholarly project in its own right.