Director of the National Center for Principled Leadership and Research Ethics (NCPRE) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Research Professor in the Coordinated Science Laboratory Professor Emerita in the College of Business
Known for
Expert, speaker, author and workshop presenter in the areas of conflict resolution, communication, research and organizational ethics, leadership, negotiation and professionalism
Gunsalus is a speaker, author and workshop presenter on matters of research integrity, leadership, ethics and professionalism in academia.[1] Her writing and speaking has been characterized as "lucid, practical and remarkably shrewd,"[2] and she presents "an extremely useful and comprehensive set of tools and skills" in the area of academic ethics "in a conversational tone, with a good sense of humor."[2]
She is the principal investigator for a $2.6M project with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute on leadership development tailored to the research setting, Labs That Work: For Everyone, Co-PI on the AGU Ethics and Equity Initiative: Catalyzing Cultural Change in the Sciences , a three-year grant awarded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and the PI for an ongoing $2.7 million project co-creating an Leadership Academy with Nanyang Technological UniversityinSingapore. She was the PI for NCPRE's centerpiece project, Ethics CORE, a national online ethics resource initiated with $1.5 million from the National Science Foundation.[3]
Gunsalus has collaborated with Carol Thrush, Brian Martinson and other authorities to develop the SOuRCe,[4] the only validated instrument for evaluating research climate in organizations.[5] The growing dataset permits participants to compare their own environments to others both inside and outside their own institutions. Findings from use of the SOuRCe informed an April 2015 Nature article on the effects of research climate on desirable and undesirable research behaviors.[6]
During her tenure at Illinois, Gunsalus has held appointments and taught courses in the Colleges of Law, Medicine, Business and Engineering, and served as assistant and associate vice chancellor for research from 1984 to 1994, associate provost from 1994 to 2002, associate dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences from 2002 to 2010, as well as acting as special counsel in the Office of University Counsel and as the campus research standards (integrity) officer. She started her career at the Computer-based Education Research Laboratory, which developed the PLATO project.[1]
Gunsalus was (2017) a member of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Responsible Science.[7] She chaired the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Committee on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility and, later, the AAAS Scientific Freedom and Responsibility Award committee.[8] She has served on the AAAS Council of Delegates, the Illinois Supreme Court Commission on Professionalism,[9] and the United States Commission on Research Integrity.[10] In 2013, she was selected as one of 15 finalists (out of 222 nominations) for the Economist Intelligence Unit's Best Business Professor of the Year Award.[11] She is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in recognition of her "sustained contributions to the national debate over improving the practical handling of ethical, legal, professional and administrative issues as they affect scientific research."[12]
