Allegheny College is one of 18 institutions participating in a nationwide initiative designed to integrate ethics and social responsibility into undergraduate computer science courses. In the fall of 2020, Allegheny’s Computer Science Department launched its Ethical Computer Science Initiative, funded in part by a grant supported by the Responsible Computer Science Challenge, a partnership of Omidyar Network, Mozilla, Schmidt Futures, and Craig Newmark Philanthropies. Through this initiative, Allegheny’s computer science faculty and students have enhanced the computer science curriculum at Allegheny College, enriched the culture of the department, developed useful software, and shared their work with others.

Our Ethical Technical Leaders

May 14, 2022

The Allegheny Ethical Computer Science Initiative at Allegheny College involves Ethics Technical Leaders (ETLs) who work on various projects for this initiative. They develop automated grading and analyzing tools, help create concepts and implementations for class activities and lab assignments, implement testing, run focus groups and break out sessions. Throughout their work, ETLs also gain a valuable insight from interrogating issues of social responsibility in computing and from reflecting on their own computer science studies.

Curricular Ethics

February 28, 2022

Training students in building a healthier internet for all is essential if we want to create a shift in the tech industry where the software is being developed with ethical considerations in mind. We believe that investigating and articulating relevant ethical challenges in our college’s application courses such as Artificial Intelligence, Data Analytics, Robotic Agents, Bioinformatics, Web Development and Database Systems, our students’ educational foundations will be enhanced to grant many meaningful pathways to responsibly design and develop applications in computer technology.