SOME OCCUPATION NAMES FOR THE CLASS EXERCISE Geographer Photogrammetrist Photogrammetric Technologist/Technician Remote Sensing Specialist Remote Sensing Technologist/Technician Mapping Scientist Geologist GIS Analyst GIS Coordinator  GIS/Data Coordinator GIS Developer GIS Intern GIS Manager GIS Officer GIS Technician  Land and Natural Resources Developer Data Librarian Professor Senior Staffer Software Engineer ------------------------------ Class exercise 1/26/08 Adopted from David Unwin, Birkbeck College, U. of London, UK, 2001 (used by permission) Purpose: to explore your initial attitudes to ethics and professionalism. Activity: Depending on numbers, arrange student into two groups of roughly the same size. Each group now does the following exercise: a) Each student picks an OCCUPATION NAME out of a hat (without peeking first) b) Now, as a group students sort into a LINE, such that at one end you have the person you think is, or needs to be, the MOST "ETHICAL" and at the other the LEAST "ETHICAL." You may want to do this by making pairwise comparisons between each item (you're an "item") in the list. c) Compare the "line ups." d) Next REPEAT, but try to establish a line up on the dimension of PROFESSIONALISM. Which is the most and which is the least "professional" of these jobs? Results from 1/26/08 Activity: Group 1 - Most "Ethical" (the extent to which you expect the person in that job to behave ethically) (highest to lowest) Senior Staffer Professor GIS Manager Mapping Scientist Photogrammetric Technician Geographer (professional geographer) Geologist (again as in licensed geologist) Here, decision-making power is key at one end, at other end (geologist in the field), their actions already governed by need to be unbiased - pure, objective science Group 1 - Most "Professional" (highest to lowest) Geologist (licensed, professional geologist, not academic) Geographer Photogrammetric Technician Mapping Scientist GIS Manager Senior Staffer Professor Need for specialized skill as opposed to broad intellectual scholarship. Not cut-and-dry. Many occupations in list should actually be side-by-side. --- Group 2 - Most "Ethical" (highest to lowest) GIS Coordinator GIS Analyst Remote Sensing Specialist GIS Developer Software Engineer Remote Sensing Technician Here again, decision-making emphasis key at high end, whereas other end governed mainly by product flow, cranking out a map or image Group 2 - Most "Professional" (highest to lowest) Software Engineer Remote Sensing Technician GIS Developer Remote Sensing Technician GIS Coordinator GIS Analyst Building tools, designing systems thought to be more in a "profession" as opposed to general managers or coordinators Take home message is that **all** occupations should be concerned with ethics in some way, and all occupations are technially professional as well. Unwin: "You can identify something you call 'ethics' and something you call 'professional.' The latter [already] implies ethical behavior, and the key to both is behavior (what you do in that role). Differing jobs have different ethical and professional expectations (good and bad). There is a correlation between ETHICS and PROFESSIONALISM." ---------------- Further thoughts from Dawn: There remains a disconnect between the "professional" community and the "academic" community. I wish that there wasn't such a separation between the communities, as I consider "GIS & T academics" to also be "GIS professionals." Is this an ethical issue or more of a professional development issue or both? I'm thinking that an ethical practitioner should, in the words of the U.S. Army, "be all that he/she can be." Do industry and government professionals prize competence and accept regulatory mechanisms more readily than faculty members, who value academic freedom (with an aversion to regulations that may threaten this freedom)? Do the two need to be mutually exclusive? Are there not assessments of competence and regulatory mechanisms in higher education, just of a different sort?