Developing Socially Responsible Professionals (SRP)
(4th National Symposium)
11th January 2023
I was fortunate to be able to attend the symposium held here at City, University of London. The speakers were from a wide variety of places and subjects. The first keynote speaker was Victoria Baines of Gresham College (providing free public lectures since 1597) speaking on the subject of ‘Metaverse Ethics’. She was both entertaining and informative. You might like to watch her ‘How to fight fake news’ talk (the talk is 45 minutes followed by a 10 minute Q&A session)
Andrew Baughen (an Honourary Visiting Lecturer at Bayes) spoke on ‘how our view of value shapes our ethical decisions’ Andrew has given a TED talk which you may find informative Andrew Baughen: Redefining Value: How Any Business Can Be The World’s Most Valuable | TED Talk
Professor Stephen O’Connor (Royal Academy of Engineering and VL at City) delivered a presentation on the subject of ‘Medical Ethics’ which highlighted cases of corruption within the industry, scarily many of the examples were of suppliers of implantable cardiac devices.
Professor Nalin Thakkar from Manchester University told us of how they have been ‘Embedding social responsibility in higher education’. The university is a civic university (similar to City) so it was created to do good for the City and improve the lives and prospects of the local young people. he gave useful examples of school outreach projects. He stressed that social responsibility will not work if it is seen as a marketing tool. There is a need to change attitude it is …‘Not about what we are good at but what are we good for’.
‘We shouldn’t always do it just because it’s technically possible’ was the theme of Professor Andy Phippen who outlined many of the problems with regulating and controlling internet content, one resource that he recommends to people who wish to stop the use of an inappropriate image of themselves is Stop Non-Consensual Intimate Image Abuse | StopNCII.org
Understanding Online Harms and How to Fix the Problem | ITNOW | Oxford Academic (oup.com) is an article in which Andy explores potential solutions to some of the online harms which are causing concern within society.
Social responsibility and employability was the theme of the talk by Dr Manny Contomanolis (Director of Career Services at Harvard University) who talked to us from and about the situation in the US where they are moving beyond the traditional classroom opportunity for addressing socially responsible professionals. It Harvard they make use of sponsored capstones (independent group research to devise an innovative solution for a real-world problem).
The last presentation of the day was an ESG white paper which is soon to be published which had been worked on in conjunction with City students as part of their dissertation, an epitome of socially responsible working within the community presented by Julia George (Court Liveryman at the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists).
I only attended the talks not the panel discussions but all the talks were informative and provided me with a good insight into what the School is focussing on and what other institutions are doing in these areas. Look out for other in-house symposiums, conferences, and events to enhance your own professional development.