I am writing to you as chair of the Faculty Council. The IIT code of ethics produced in CSEP's year and a half long project is now ready for endorsement by the Faculty Council and various other groups on campus. You will find attached version 6.2, the document that emerged from the contributions of almost 50 people.

How you handle the endorsement process is, of course, up to you and Faculty Council procedures. We will be happy to transmit a copy of this letter and the code to each member of the Faculty Council or cooperate with you on any other arrangement you devise.

The code of ethics is an overarching statement that covers each constituency in the university—faculty, students, alumni, administrators, trustees, staff, and suppliers. The project to produce it was guided by an Exploratory Committee of CSEP personnel, CSEP Advisory Board members (including a trustee), and a member of the Institute for Psychology and of the Office of Institutional Advancement.

The drafting of the code was a bottom-up effort in which separate focus groups, each representing a different IIT constituency, worked consecutively on the evolving document. The "starter" draft was produced by the Exploratory Committee after scrutinizing a few universities' top-down codes. The five focus groups made suggestions and criticisms that led to a series of changes and successive versions of the code. All of these various versions of the code can be seen online at http://ethics.iit.edu/iitcode/versions.html.

The Exploratory Committee met in December of 2006 with representatives of the focus groups. After a thorough critiquing of Versions 5.5 and 6 in that meeting, the group judged the code ready for review by someone who was not involved in the project. Susan Feinberg, professor in the Humanities Department, carried out the review. She made a few stylistic edits and provided an overall evaluation that the code was "clear, comprehensive, and coherent."

The final version, 6.1, was sent to all focus group members for approval. That process yielded one addition to the code, the last phrase in article 9. For endorsement, we now submit Version 6.2 to the Faculty Council, SGA, the President's Council, the Alumni Council, the Quality of Work-Life Committee, and the Board of Trustees.

Please let me know how you want to handle this process in the Faculty Council. We plan a public event to launch the code this semester, tentatively scheduled for April 5 during the noon hour. Please send your response to me or csep@iit.edu as soon as possible.

Best regards,


Vivian