U SO DEL ORDENADOR EN LAS EMPRESAS TUROLENSES

Our students had been engaged all semester in meaningful discus- sion and writing about diversity issues in science. By the end of the semester, they were ready to act. To harness their energy and turn their attention toward the future, we developed a grant-writing assignment to end our course. This assignment required students to identify and write a mini-grant requesting funding for a diversity-focused scientific research project based on previously reported results. Developing the research plan required extensive reading of the primary literature since the methodology of the proposed experiments needed to be based on real science. It also required that students synthesize the diversity con- cepts of the course and apply them to the process of science. The semester culminated with group presentations to our funding founda- tion. Sample student grant projects included the following:

• Type I or II: Which One Are You? An Investigation of the Muscle Type of Elite Runners;

• Coronary Heart Disease and Race-Specific Drugs: A Reaction Study

of the BiDil Trial Performed on African Americans;5

• Yoga and Hypertension.

We were always excited by these proposals, many of which were top quality and contained fundable ideas. In fact, our course planning for the next year was infused with new material because of this assignment. Most importantly, proposals revealed students’ interest in and concern for diversity issues in science. They selected topics based on their own questions, some of which built on course content. In most cases,

though, topics reflected other issues that students deemed worthy of exploration. Their proposals revealed that they could effectively discuss both the social significance and the scientific aims of the research. And the presentations, which included some tough questions from founda- tion representatives and audience members, were professional and enthusiastic, suggesting that students embraced and were passionate about the diversity issue they chose to address.

Final Reflections

We ended the semester by asking students for their final reflections on the course content: lessons learned, questions left unanswered, and lingering concerns. As students submitted these reflections, each took five minutes to present and discuss some aspect of his or her reflection with the class.

While we were pleased with the students’ reflections insofar as they confirmed that students now saw science differently and that our strate- gies of creating active learning projects, integrating diversity through- out the course, blending and connecting of disciplines, and stimulating thought about science and diversity had been effective, we did not stop there. We also took time to reflect together on the same issues, identi- fying what worked well, what we would like to improve, and what topics we might add or change the next time we teach the course.

Each of us kept an informal file in which we stored relevant news or science articles and information from listservs and websites that may prove valuable the next time we teach the course. Viewing the course as a work in progress, albeit one with definite goals and parameters, helped us maintain the enthusiasm we experienced when we first devel- oped the course, and it has helped us convey our enthusiasm for the subject to our students. This enthusiasm combined with content that students saw as relevant to the real world contributed greatly to the suc- cess of the course.

Notes

1_{Readings for this and other segments of the class are included in the}

appendix. In this discussion, we outline Kant’s categorical imperative for treating people with respect: treat all people, including yourself, never merely as a means, but always as an end, and connect it to informed consent. We also discuss the main principle of Mill’s utilitari- anism—do the act that brings about the greatest good for the greatest

number of people—and Ross’s prima facie duties: promise keeping, reparation for harms done, gratitude, justice, beneficence, self- improvement, non-maleficence, so students have a general ethical foundation to inform their discussion. Discussions of these theories can be found in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy <http://www.iep. utm.edu> or in most introductory ethics texts (Geirsson and Holmgren, for example).

2_{This “add women [or diversity] and stir” approach has been criti-}

cized in feminist science studies and discussions on integrating diversity throughout the curriculum. See, for example, Sandra Harding’s Is

Science Multicultural? Postcolonialisms, Feminisms, and Epistemologies and more recently “Diversity as an Integral Component of College Curricula” by Cohn and Mullennix and “Diversity and Disciplinary Practices” by Carr, both in Diversity Across the Curriculum: A Guide for

Faculty in Higher Education, edited by Branche, Mullennix, and Cohn.

3_{Summers’s comments suggest that innate sex differences in ability,}

personal choice, and socialization likely explain the fact that few women occupy high-level positions in science. His follow-up letter addressed the concerns that others, including Harvard faculty, raised regarding his initial remarks.

4_{These movies include The Race for the Double Helix on the BBC and}

The Secret of Photo 51 on PBS.

5_{BiDil is a race-specific drug approved for the treatment of heart fail-}

ure in African Americans.

6_{Performance-based assessments are included. This last section}

shows how we use the student’s reflections to assess the student. We also use all the students’ formative and summative assessments to remodel the course.

Works Cited

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Branche, Jerome, John Mullennix, and Ellen R. Cohn, eds. Diversity

Across the Curriculum: A Guide for Faculty in Higher Education. Boston: Anker Publishing, 2007.

Carr, Jean Ferguson. “Diversity and Disciplinary Practices.” Jerome Branche et al. 30–37.

Cohn, Ellen R., and John W. Mullennix. “Diversity as an Integral Component of College Curricula.” Jerome Branche et al. 11–17. Geirsson, Heimir, and Margaret R. Holmgren, eds. Ethical Theory: A

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