About the Staff at the Research Center
on Computing & Society

Terrell Ward Bynum,
Director

TERRELL WARD BYNUM is Professor of Philosophy at Southern Connecticut State University, Director of the Research Center on Computing and Society there, and Visiting Professor at De Montfort University in Leicester, England. He is a lifetime member of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, Past Chair of the Committee on Professional Ethics of the Association for Computing Machinery, and Past Chair of the Committee on Philosophy and Computers of the American Philosophical Association.

Professor Bynum’s academic degrees include a Ph.D. (CUNY), M.Phil. (CUNY), M.A. (Princeton), B.A. (U. of Delaware) – all in Philosophy – and a B.S. (U. of Delaware) in Chemistry. He has been a Fulbright Fellow (U. of Bristol, England), Danforth Fellow (Princeton), Woodrow Wilson Fellow (Princeton), Mellon Fellow (CUNY), and Dartmouth Fellow (Dartmouth College).

On the topic of computing and human values, Dr. Bynum has published articles and books, created conferences and workshops, given speeches and addresses, produced and hosted video programs, and developed an internationally influential web site. His other works include books, monographs, articles and reviews in logic, psychology, history of philosophy, and education. In 1968, he created the scholarly journal Metaphilosophy, which he edited for twenty-five years.

In 1991, Professor Bynum was co-creator and co-director (with Walter Maner) of the National Conference on Computing and Values funded by the National Science Foundation; and in 1995 he was co-creator and co-director (with Simon Rogerson) of the ETHICOMP series of international computer ethics conferences held in England, Spain, the Netherlands, Italy, Poland, Portugal, and Greece. He is currently co-chair of ETHICOMP 2007 to be held in Tokyo, Japan in March, 2007.

Professor Bynum’s personal web site is: http://home.southernct.edu/~bynumt2/

Richard Volkman,
Associate Director

RICHARD VOLKMAN is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Southern Connecticut State University and Associate Director of the Research Center on Computing and Society.

In 1998, Dr. Volkman completed his dissertation, Why be Moral? The Ethical Individualist Response to Alienation from Morality, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In that work, he defends the claim that an individual’s pursuit of the good life is a sufficient mechanism for generating moral duties. Dr. Volkman’s interests in information technology stem from his desire to understand how and to what extent the Internet and other information technologies impact our ability to make judgment about the good life. This is the subject of his forthcoming paper presentation at the Computer Ethics Philosophical Enquiry this summer. He presented “Software Ownership and Natural Rights” at ETHICOMP 99.

Dr. Volkman’s interests extend beyond the philosophical analysis of technology, into the medium’s actual use both in the undergraduate curriculum and in research. He has authored and produced a multimedia CD-ROM on the ethics of abortion as a supplement to his usual text. He is also working on a series of computer animations to illustrate complex philosophical ideas and visions of the universe. Subjects include: “Determinism,” “Form and Matter,” “The Will to Power,” and “Mind and Technology.”

Krystyna Górniak-Kocikowska,
Senior Research Associate

KRYSTYNA GÓRNIAK-KOCIKOWSKA is a Professor of Philosophy at Southern Connecticut State University, Director of the Religious Studies Program at the University, as well as Senior Research Associate in the Research Center on Computing & Society. She is a member of the American Academy of Religion (Co-Chair of the Group on Religion in Eastern Europe and the Former USSR, 1995-1999), American Association of University Women, American Philosophical Association, Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, International Hegel Society, Karl Jaspers Society of North America, and the Polish Philosophical Society.

Dr. Górniak-Kocikowska’s academic degrees include an MA in German Philology and a PhD in Philosophy from the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poland, as well as an MA and an ABD in Religious Studies from Temple University in Philadelphia, PA, USA.

Prior to her arrival in the United States, Dr. Górniak-Kocikowska had been, for 12 years, on the Faculty of the Philosophy Department at the Adam Mickiewicz University. She has received grants, among others, from the Kosciuszko Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Metaphilosophy Foundation.

In addition to her work in the area of German philosophy, and on selected issues in the field of Religious Studies, Dr. Górniak-Kocikowska is actively involved in Computer (Information) Ethics research. Her main interest is in ICT’s impact on social justice issues related to globalization. Since 1995, she has attended several ETHICOMP conferences (international conferences on Computer Ethics) and has published articles in this field in the USA and Poland. She co-edited and published (with Andrzej Kocikowski and Terrell Ward Bynum) a CD-ROM collection of “milestone” papers on Computer Ethics translated from English into Polish. Dr. Górniak-Kocikowska is on the Editorial Advisory Board of the British Journal of Information, Communication & Ethics in Society.

Frances S. Grodzinsky,
Visiting Scholar

FRANCES S. GRODZINSKY is a Professor of Computer Science and Information Technology at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut where she has been teaching for seventeen years. She has been involved in the field of Computer Ethics since 1991. In 1992, 1994 and 2000, Dr. Grodzinsky participated in Ethics Workshops sponsored by the National Science Foundation. She has given numerous workshops and presentations at SIGCSE, CEPE, ETHICOMP, APPE and ISTAS. Her areas of research include virtue ethics and the concept of moral obligation, identity and community, equity of access, and cyberstalking. She was one of the first to advocate for a reexamination of virtue ethics as an approach to teaching computer ethics.

Dr. Grodzinsky sits on the board of the Hersher Institute of Ethics at Sacred Heart University where she has been instrumental in fostering ethics across the curriculum. To this end, she and a colleague offer faculty workshops each May to a juried group of colleagues interested in implementing ethics modules in their courses. In the Computer Science/Information Technology department, Dr. Grodzinsky has implemented a computer ethics course as a required course for all majors. See http://compsci.sacredheart.edu/grodzinsky for a list of all publications, presentations and workshops. Her commitment to equity of access was realized in 1994 when she received a grant from the National Science Foundation to create an Adaptive Technology Laboratory at Sacred Heart University.

Margaret E. Tehan,
Webmaster

MARGARET E. TEHAN is a graduate of Southern CT State University with a BS in Fine Art. She is the president of Margaret’s Folly, an award-winning Web site design firm located in Guilford, CT. She is the User Interface Engineer at OutlookSoft, a financial software firm in Stamford, CT. Additionally, Ms. Tehan is the recipient of an Urban Artists Initiative grant from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts and Hartford, Connecticut’s Institute for Community Research.

For information on former staff and visiting scholars, click here.

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