In the United States, Research Integrity, founded on principles of equity, justice, inclusion, fairness, beneficence, and other positive ethical values has increasingly focused on regulatory issues rather than directly engaging the ethical values. The project team proposes a novel research integrity training approach that integrates principles of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) into research integrity training. DEI principles are the foundation for many research integrity regulations and practices, and this project will engage students and faculty in making personal connections between the two.
The project involves three levels of institutional innovation, impacting a large number of faculty and students. First, the team will create new live Research Integrity trainings and identify existing Research Integrity scenarios and case studies that include inquiry into DEI topics. The Project Director will ensure that all Cal Poly faculty receiving awards in 2020-2021 are aware of the resources. This aspect of the project will directly reach 300 faculty. Second, the Director of the Office of Student Research will incorporate DEI and Research Integrity training into faculty research mentoring training, directly impacting 60-70 faculty. Third, the team will create and pilot a new undergraduate and graduate student certificate program that emphasizes Research Integrity and the interconnection between Research Integrity and DEI inquiry. The team expects the certificate program to directly impact 60-70 students. Indirect impacts of this program should reach far more students and faculty, as participants leverage their know knowledge and skills in the lab and classroom environments. This emphasis on the connection between Research Integrity and DEI inquiry will allow faculty and students to deeply engage with the topic of research integrity.
This project will inform training in research integrity in three primary ways. First, the project will provide insight into potential methods to improve research integrity training at the undergraduate and graduate student levels. This will increase the ability to train researchers throughout their careers, with the intent that research integrity practice and principles are familiar to students as they continue their educational training, or for those who do not continue into academia, as they enter the science, technology, engineering, and other professional fields. Second, this project will help retain ethically-minded students in the fields in inquiry and research by demonstrating that effective research projects are grounded in an understanding of equity and diversity issues that relate to the research. Third, the project will demonstrate to students and faculty the meaning behind the compliance regulations, and provide a vehicle for the campus community to examine how effectively current practices fulfill the regulations and ethical/justice principles from which those regulations were devised.