Postdoctoral Fellow Accepts Position in Embedded EthiCS at Harvard

The Program is pleased to announce that Dr. William Cochran, a Postdoctoral Fellow in Leadership and Character and the Department of Computer Science, has accepted a position as a Postdoctoral Fellow in Philosophy with the Embedded EthiCS program at Harvard University. He will work to integrate ethics into Harvard’s computer science curriculum. The Embedded EthiCS initiative encourages students to contemplate not only “what technologies they could create, but whether they should create them.”

During his time with the Program for Leadership and Character, Dr. Cochran has taught courses in the Department of Computer Science on “The Ethics of Emerging Technologies” and “Ethical Leadership in Computer Science.” He also led a discussion group for undergraduate students with Research Fellow Dylan Brown called “Technology and the Good Life.”

Dr. Cochran reflected on his time with the Program for Leadership and Character and how it will serve him in the future: “On a practical level, the experience of teaching computer science students, interacting with computer science faculty, and designing modules for the computer science curriculum—experience I would not have had coming straight from my PhD—lines up perfectly with the work I’ll do at Harvard. I also believe the training I received on research-based ways to integrate lessons on character and leadership into my courses helped me stand out in the application process.”

“On a personal level,” Dr. Cochran added, “the people that I’ve met here in the Program for Leadership and Character have been a tremendous source of support and encouragement. The faith they have placed in me and my work has helped me develop as a teacher and a scholar, and their example has given me a better sense of what it means to be a leader of character.”