Communications of the ACM
CS Department Hires Ethics TAs
Brown University's Department of Computer Science announced the inaugural hiring of 10 Ethics Teaching Assistants, who will develop and deliver curricula around ethics and society in five of the department's largest courses.
The department created the ETA program last spring to acknowledge the impact that the products and services created by computer scientists have on society, says Professor of Computer Science and Department Chair Ugur Cetintemel, who helped spearhead the program. "We want our concentrators to think about the ethical and societal implications of what they do, not as an afterthought but as another fundamental dimension they should consider as they develop their work," he says.
The CS department is already incoorporating ethics into its curriculum through multiple courses, but the department hopes ETAs will encourage students to view the topic as a more fundamental aspect of CS. Two ETAs will work on each of the five CS courses in the program this semester.
All ETAs are CS concentrators, but most are also double concentrating in non-tech adjacent fields, such as philosophy and modern culture and media. Hiring ETAs from diverse academic backgrounds was a part of the CS department's larger goal to strengthen collaboration and partnership with the humanities.
From The Brown Daily Herald
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