Ethics across the curriculum: An effective response to ABET 2000

ASEE Annual Conference Proceedings

Volumn , Issue , 2002, Pages 10689-10702

  Frey, William J ^a   Sanchez, Halley D ^a,b   Cruz, José A ^a,b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF PUERTO RICO   (Puerto Rico)

^b Center for Philosophy

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

COURSES; DESIGN PROJECTS; ENGINEERING PROGRAMS; ENGINEERING STUDENTS;

CURRICULA; DECISION MAKING; DESIGN; KNOWLEDGE ACQUISITION; PROBLEM SOLVING; PROFESSIONAL ASPECTS; PROJECT MANAGEMENT; STUDENTS; TECHNICAL PRESENTATIONS;

ENGINEERING EDUCATION;

EID: 8744269353     PISSN: 01901052     EISSN: None     Source Type: Conference Proceeding    
DOI: None     Document Type: Conference Paper

References (14)

1. Ibo van de Poel (2001) Investigating Ethical Issues in Engineering Design, Science and Engineering Ethics, 7: 429-446.
2. NSPE stands for the National Society of Professional Engineers.
3. Michael Pritchard & Mark Holtzapple (1997) Responsible Engineering: Gilbane Gold Revisited Science and Engineering Ethics 3; 217-230
4. Michael Davis (1999) Ethics and the University, Routledge, London, 128, 157.
5. Michael J. Rabins, Edwin Harris Jr., &Jeremy E. Hanzlik (1996) An NSF /Bovay Endowment Supported Workshop to Develop Numerical Problems Associated with Ethics Caswes for Use in Required Undergraduate Engineering Courses. Proceedings of the 1996 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference and Exposition: session 3332. See also http://ethics.tamu.edu/.
6. C. E. Harris, M. S. Pritchard, & M. J. Rabins (2000) Engineering Ethics: Concepts and Cases. Wadsworth, Belmont. See the CD-ROM, Cases, Mt. Dioxin. Edmund Tsang and John Reis developed this case.
7. Michael J. Rabins (1998) Teaching Engineering Ethics to Undergraduates. Science and Engineering Ethics 4: 2991-301.
8. José Cruz & William J. Frey (2001) Ethical Empowerment: An Ethics Module for Introduction to Computers. Proceedings of the 2001 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference and Exposition: Session 1520.
9. The IIT workshop is described in detail by Michael Davis (1999) Ethics and the University, Routledge, London, Chapter 7. On the other hand, some universities (for example, St. Olaf) employ intensive, summer-long workshops that amount to graduate level courses in ethical theory. But their goal is more ambitious: to empower faculty to develop and teach stand-alone ethics courses in their areas of expertise.
10. We have discussed many of the ideas in this introduction in the previous section of this paper. For further discussion see, José A. Cruz and William J. Frey (2001) An Effective Strategy for Integrating Ethics Across the Curriculum in Engineering: An ABET 2000 Challenge (Unpublished manuscript).
11. Caroline Whitbeck (1998) Ethics in Engineering Practice and Research Cambridge University Press, Cambridge/New York, 176-181.
12. CIAPR stands for the Colegio de Ingenieros y Agrimensores de Puerto Rico, the College of Engineers and Surveyors of Puerto Rico. Canon 2 prohibits working outside one's area of expertise while Canon 5, practical norm j prohibits a PE from signing off on documents that he or she has not properly inspected.
13. Michael Davis (1999) Ethics and the University, Routledge, London, 143-174. Here, Davis provides a comprehensive discussion of the case method parts of which we used in our workshop and in the instructor's manuals we prepared for participants.
14. We recently had an opportunity to discuss our workshop with engineering ethics faculty from several universities when we gave a panel presentation before the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics on March 2, 2002. What this audience found most useful was not the idea of ethics across the curriculum (we counted seven presentations on EAC during the conference, not including our own) but the results from our workshops that we reported: the cases developed and the success of the workshop in awakening the interest of our engineering faculty for trying out ethics integration exercises in their classes. Whatever approach an engineering college uses to respond to ABET ethics requirements, we feel that support from the engineering faculty is crucial. Our workshop has proven a good means for generating this support.