Ethics and Law in STEM-Related Fields

1.5 Credit Hours

Employment Law is designed to pick up where other courses leave off. Equipped with strategies for managing intellectual property and business planning, you must consider how it will all work within the employment structure of your enterprise. Whether you plan to start your own business or work within an existing company, you will be faced with legal issues relating to human capital. To that end, this course will start with the legal consequences of how workers are classified, an issue central to running a business, managing others, and knowing your own rights. We will then talk about the risks and opportunities around granting and receiving job security through written contracts and other devices. After that, we will cover questions of utmost importance to workers and employers in the current legal-social-political climate: workplace privacy and employment discrimination. Both areas of law are in flux, and are crucial to risk management on the employer side and legal rights on the employee side. Course assessments will consist of weekly exercises, as well as a final examination and capstone assignment in the form of a team presentation.