This year the Center for Ethics continued as the central hub for ethics research and programming at UCF. Jonathan Beever (Founding Director and Associate Professor of Philosophy), along with Steve Kuebler (Associate Director and Professor of Chemistry and Optics), developed ethics research and researchers, supported student interns, led programming and gave lectures on a range of ethical issues. I will bullet out specific outcomes here below.
People
We supported three postdoctoral researchers who work with our NSF-funded research team. Two are with us through 2025: Alex Nikolaidis (Ph.D. in Philosophy, Ohio State) is advised by Beever and works as a member of our research team and for the Center for Ethics; and Josh Kissel (Ph.D. in Philosophy, Northwestern) is advised by Laurie Pinkert (UCF Department of Writing and Rhetoric) and works as a member of our research team, for the Center for Ethics and for the Center for Writing Excellence. Our third postdoc, Hajer Albalawi (Ph.D. Texts & Technology, UCF) is advised by Beever and works as a member of our research team through the 2023-2024 academic year.
We also worked with four undergraduate interns on a series of projects. Key among them was an ethics-experts podcast project led by Grace Gueduoar.
Research
Primary investigator Jonathan Beever leads a team with Steve Kuebler, Laurie Pinkert and Liz Klonoff (College of Graduate Studies) in their fourth year of NSF funding for their project studying how the intersections of individual value foundations and organizational ethics frameworks challenge recruitment and retention of STEM students.
Beever is also co-investigator and ethics lead on another large multi-year federal grant (Primary Investigator Gregory Welch, College of Nursing) to design and implement a novel platform to make XR (virtual and augmented and extended reality) research more accessible. Beever’s role is to identify and guide conversations around ethical issues that arise in the development and implementation of this project.
Beever and Kuebler, in partnership with the Office of Undergraduate Research and individual faculty from across campus also lead ethics workshops funded by Research Experience for Undergraduates (REUs), which are STEM-based research training programs that bring students from across the country to UCF for summer-term research programs. The Center for Ethics partners with researchers to develop and facilitate required conversations about research ethics for students in these programs.
AI
This year, the Center for Ethics has led the university is thinking about ethical implications of generative Artificial Intelligence systems. Both Beever and Kuebler have given numerous invited talks to students (through classroom lectures), faculty peers (through FCTL workshops and conferences) and the community at large (through Ginsberg Center events and national-level conferences and workshops). While the specifics of the generative AI platforms that emerged this year were new to us all, the ethics of emerging technologies is an area of expertise for the Center, so our gearing up was efficient and effective.
Pathways
The C4E partnered with the College of Graduate Studies and the Pathways to Success graduate student workshops series to revamp and lead that program. As all university programs come back into that program this fall, C4E leaders and Ethics Ambassadors will lead the two required workshops and continue to support CGS in their mission to strengthen graduate education.
Ethically Speaking
Ethically Speaking, the center’s university-wide seminar series, hosted four talks this year from nationally-recognized voices in ethics and ethics education. This year’s talks were by Heather Douglas, Deni Elliott, Justin Hess and Darby Vickers.
Be Better
The C4E’s Be Better Club focused on two themes: the Ethics of AI (led by Beever in Fall 2023) and Ethics in Higher Ed (led by Alex Nikolaidis in Spring 2024). These informal ethics discussions each start with a shared podcast to stimulate thinking and then lead into a community conversation. All events have been captured on the Center for Ethics’ Youtube playlist and linked on our website. Next years’ Be Better Club will be facilitated by Joshua Kissel.
— Jonathan Beever, director