Faculty Grant Funds Curriculum in Ethics, Values and Technology

MELBOURNE, FLA. — Cem Kaner, Florida Tech professor of computer science, has earned a $268,060 National Science Foundation grant for a multi-media approach
to teaching ethics and values in engineering and technology. The grant will fund development of between three and six multi-part learning units by Kaner
and his collaborators, Florida Tech computer science faculty members Richard Ford and Scott Tilley.
“There is ongoing, rapid change in the laws that these units will address,” said Kaner. “Each topic can be studied in terms of ethics issues that the
student might face while conducting research as a student, or later, as a faculty member.”
His project will cover such relevant topics as whistle-blowing, reverse engineering, security vulnerabilities in computing, and intellectual property
rights. These are those associated with university labs and faculty owned businesses that commercialize university-developed research.
Individual learning units will provide video lectures and slides, background briefing papers including a literature review, which explains the engineering
and engineering ethics issues to a law-specialist reader and another that explains the issues to the engineering reader. The unit will also include study
guide questions and grading suggestions for the instructor.
Kaner is an attorney whose principle legal focus is computer-related law. He is also a widely known author on software quality control.