Achievement

The IGERT PI taught a new class on Societal and Ethical Issues in Nanotechnology in coordination with an NSF-supported project to create web-based resources for teaching a similar class elsewhere. Students came from ten different departments, and were exposed to speakers from a variety of fields (philosophy, medical ethics, communications, physics environmental science, etc.) as well as discussions amongst themselves. One IGERT trainee in the class reports: "The final project of writing a case study for future educational use pushed in me in new directions and allowed me to find ways to merge my interest in the environment with my interests in nanotech policy and research attitudes. ... By participating in a class with students from other levels of education and other disciplines, I was able to pinpoint my weaknesses in communicating scientific ideas to the general populace and improve on the means in which I do communicate."