cience and Engineering Ethics

Science and Engineering Ethics (2004) 10, 369-381

Science and Engineering Ethics, Volume 10, Issue 2, 2004 369

Keywords: engineering ethics, curriculum, honor code, professionalism ABSTRACT: Ethical decision-making is essential to professionalism in engineering. For that reason, ethics is a required topic in an ABET approved engineering curriculum and it must be a foundational strand that runs throughout the entire curriculum. In this paper the curriculum approach that is under development at the Padnos School of Engineering (PSE) at Grand Valley State University will be described. The design of this program draws heavily from the successful approach used at the service academies – in particular West Point and the United States Naval Academy. As is the case for the service academies, all students are introduced to the “Honor Concept” (which includes an Honor Code) as freshmen. As an element of professionalism the PSE program requires 1500 hours of co-op experience which is normally divided into three semesters of full-time work alternated with academic semesters during the last two years of the program. This offers the faculty an opportunity to teach ethics as a natural aspect of professionalism through the academic requirements for co-op. In addition to required elements throughout the program, the students are offered opportunities to participate in service projects which highlight responsible citizenship. These elements and other parts of the approach will be described.

“Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it.”

King Solomon1

* An earlier version of this paper was presented at the “Ethics and Social Responsibility in Engineering and Technology” meeting, New Orleans, 2003. Address for correspondence: Shirley T. Fleischmann, PhD, Professor, Grand Valley State University, Seymour and Esther Padnos School of Engineering, 301 West Fulton Street, Grand Rapids, MI 49504, USA; email: [email protected]. 1353-3452 © 2004 Opragen Publications, POB 54, Guildford GU1 2YF, UK. http://www.opragen.co.uk

Essential Ethics – Embedding Ethics into an Engineering Curriculum*

Shirley T. Fleischmann Seymour and Esther Padnos School of Engineering, Grand Valley State University, MI, USA

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Introduction

What are the essential elements of an engineering education? Certainly a high level of technical competency in key basic areas is important. Mastery of scientific, mathematical, and technical ideas and issues is important. Practical, hands-on skills are important. Communications skills are important. Mastery of modern tools – electronic and other – is important. All of these things are important; a student cannot be a practicing engineer without them, yet they are not sufficient because an engineer is something that you become, not just something that you do. The way to becoming an engineer involves educating and training habits of the mind; it involves assuming a high level of responsibility for design – for the products and processes that flow from our imaginations and into reality. Ethical decision-making lies at the heart of engineering design. It touches on technical competency, but reaches out to include a deeper understanding of how design affects individuals, society, and the natural environment. In a real way engineering ethics informs and guides all of engineering practice. Ethics is essential in that it forms a foundation for the practice of engineering. It is the way of engineering. Following the wisdom in the words of Solomon (quoted at the beginning of this paper), we start at the beginning of a student’s academic career and weave the threads tightly into all that they learn from us. This paper will describe the major influences to, and the features of, the approach that is under development in the Padnos School of Engineering at Grand Valley State University.

Ethics – An Engineering Curriculum Challenge

Engineering educators are called upon to prepare young engineers to meet the challenge of socially responsible and ethically sound practice of our profession. There is a challenge here. Most engineering educators would agree that ethics is important but as noted by S. Pfatteicher, “The current engineering ethics “dilemma,” in short, has been to find a way to provide meaningful ethics instruction to all engineering students without overburdening the faculty, without increasing graduation requirements, and without removing essential technical material from the curriculum.”2 (p.137) This dilemma is heightened with the new accreditation criteria in engineering, the ABET 2000 (a-k) Criteria which explicitly requires programs to demonstrate that students understand their professional and ethical responsibilities (criterion f) and that they have the broad education necessary to understand engineering design in a societal and global context (criterion h). Requiring at least one course in which ethics is a primary topic is a start. However, in a survey of 242 institutions offering engineering degrees, Karl Stephan3 found that fewer than 27% had such a requirement. Grand Valley was (and still is) one of those schools but a single course is not enough to change the culture of a school – especially when the course is taught by faculty outside of the engineering discipline.

Our choice has been to add to the required course by weaving an “ethics theme” throughout the curriculum. This is more difficult and it involves a commitment by a majority of the faculty to carefully build an intellectual foundation for ethical practice.

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Thoughts become words, words become actions, actions become habits, habits are basic to character, and character establishes destiny. We are in the character-building business. We must begin with teaching how to think and to develop certain careful and truthful habits of the mind. Embedding ethics into an engineering curriculum is ultimately about instilling truth at the most fundamental levels of engineering practice. As a profession we have been entrusted with special and very powerful knowledge. That knowledge comes with a responsibility to use it wisely and for the common good. Making ethical practice of engineering second nature for our students will happen most effectively if it becomes a part of the fabric and culture of the engineering department.

How Is Engineering Ethics Different?

In his book, The Civilized Engineer, Samuel Florman proposes that, for engineers, ethical practice involves more than morality or “goodness”. He states: “The greatest threats to moral engineering are carelessness, sloppiness, laziness, and lack of concentration.”4 For engineers, competence is an important part of ethical practice and this is something that would most likely not be effectively addressed from the viewpoint of other academic disciplines.

Richard Devon5 presents another aspect of engineering ethics as he explores group (as compared to individual) decision-making. He comments: “It really is not very important how ethical engineers are, if they do not understand the implications of their designs.” In his paper he proposes a shift of focus away from individual ethics toward ethics as a guide to the process of decision-making in engineering design (often a group effort). This directly addresses criteria f and h of the ABET 2000 accreditation criteria.

Because engineering practice impacts society as a whole in a significant way, engineering ethics must be broadened to include competence on an individual as well as on a group (or process) level. This is best addressed from within the engineering discipline. Students who encounter ethics from within the discipline of engineering first and then take ethics from a different academic discipline, such as philosophy for example, will be able to compare and contrast different approaches and develop critical thinking skills. This point is more fully explored by Pfatteicher.2 (pp.140-141)

Influences to the P.S.E. Approach There are two major influences that have shaped our approach to making ethics instruction fundamental in our curriculum. The military academies – especially the United States Military Academy at West Point and the United States Naval Academy have greatly influenced our thinking. The second major influence is our experience with the development of curriculum materials to teach environmentally responsible design. Each of these influences will be described briefly in this section. Military Academies: The author taught at the United States Naval Academy from 1982-1989 and has, in more recent years, developed a dialogue with faculty at West

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Point. For many years the Military Academies have demonstrated success in developing professionalism at the same time as an academic discipline is taught. It is also interesting to note that while leadership in the armed services is the major focus of our military academies, they are predominantly engineering schools. This makes their experience especially valuable to engineering schools in the civilian world. While there are great differences between civilian schools and military academies, Col. L. Donnithorne, in his book, The West Point Way of Leadership, notes that differences in military and civilian leadership “are differences in degree, not in kind.”6 Col. Donnithorne (now a civilian college president) details the West Point approach and discusses how this approach can be used in civilian schools to produce leaders of character.

The military academies teach professionalism most effectively by modeling it at all times both inside and outside the classroom, by requiring students to practice professionalism at all times, and by making a commitment to critique that practice at all times. A military influence is felt in all classes, perhaps most visibly by the requirement to wear uniforms and to live within a formal command structure, but it is also felt through the choice of examples presented in class and the instructors’ willingness to share life experience with the material being taught. While civilian schools cannot require uniforms or enforce a command structure, they can make a commitment to model what they teach at all possible times, to require students to practice engineering under many circumstances, and to be willing to critique student practice both formally and informally. In a real sense, an excellent engineering instructor is always looking for “a teachable moment” and seizes it when it occurs in or outside of class. There is much to learn from the military academy approach and the specific areas that have been adopted by the Padnos School of Engineering (PSE) will be more fully discussed throughout this paper. Environmentally Responsible Design Curriculum: In the early 1990’s the faculty of the Padnos School of Engineering (PSE) was under contract to produce a curriculum to teach environmentally responsible design. We struggled with the most effective method to fulfill this contract. One option was to develop a course or possibly a series of courses – maybe even a concentration area in environmental engineering. The problem with this approach was that a single course or even a series of courses were unlikely to change the thought patterns and intellectual habits of all of our students. Such an approach would also most likely involve elective courses that would be taken by just a few students. We wanted to change the culture of the engineering school and to have an impact on the preparation of all students. This is precisely what we also wanted to do with ethics. Adding required courses to the curriculum was certainly not an option. In addition to an already over-crowded curriculum, we were overwhelmed by the amount of new information that we would be required to master and teach.

We decided to develop curriculum materials that could be used in courses that are normally required for all engineering students at all levels. We also decided that we would use environmental problems as a context for teaching the material that we already taught and that rather than teaching students about environmentally responsible

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design, we would set up exercises in which they would be required to practice environmentally responsible design. They learned about regulations when the exercise required them to comply with regulations. The instructor could then use this experience as an opportunity to outline how the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and State Department of Natural Resources (DNR) or Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) have structured regulations. We also could teach them where the details could be found when needed.

The results of our efforts7 received awards from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and from the Michigan Society of Professional Engineers (MSPE) for the innovative approach. The most important thing to note is that the approach was, and still is, very effective. We knew that we had to involve students in the practice of what we were trying to teach and that they had to encounter it in almost every major learning experience. This was carried forward into our approach to ethics.

The PSE Approach – Under Development In the early 1990’s the PSE faculty adopted a Mission and Values Statement. In this we followed the example of many of the manufacturing plants in our area (many of them co-op employers associated with PSE) that adopted such statements as a part of the quality movement. We also emulated the military academies who clearly publish a mission statement. Such a statement serves to focus faculty efforts and it serves as a guide for new efforts. The last paragraph of the PSE Values Statement specifically addresses a broadening of our approach, “…beyond technical knowledge to include ethical responsibility in the practice of our profession.” For many years this statement served to guide faculty thinking and framed copies of the Mission and Values Statement were predominantly displayed. The problem was that because there was no requirement for the students to wrestle with the meaning of this statement, it was difficult to get them to “buy into” it.

Honor Code Last year, in response to numerous “misunderstandings” on the part of students, the PSE faculty adopted an Honor Code very similar to the Honor Code at West Point. We have always had the university student code of conduct, but (like the Mission and Values Statement) we found that most students had never bothered to read it. Certainly they had never wrestled with how to apply these ideas to their own professional lives. The same was true for the professional engineering society codes of ethics.

On their first day at the academy, cadets at West Point are given a card to carry in their wallets with the Honor Code on one side and three “rules of thumb” to be used in the application of the honor code on the other side. We decided to produce a similar card, to laminate it to give a sense of permanence, and (like West Point) to make the introduction to this concept a memorable event. Introduction to the Honor Code occurs either in freshman orientation or in the first engineering course near the beginning of

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the semester. Students are welcomed into the profession of engineering and an overview of the status of our profession as a highly honorable one is provided. Students are told that the integrity of the profession can be assured only if the integrity of every member is assured. They are then told that as newcomers to the profession, they must establish personal integrity as a primary virtue. The Honor Code is presented as part of a larger Honor Concept – also explained on the folded card into which the laminated card is inserted. The two sides of the laminated card are shown in figure 1 and the Spirit of the Honor Concept (printed on the folded card) is shown in figure 2. The folded card also has a list, on the back, of all of the professional engineering societies with student chapters at Grand Valley. This adds to the perception of the Honor Code as something much bigger than just a local school requirement; it is a professional requirement, and students are welcomed into the profession as “card-carrying” members. Note that the Spirit of the Honor Concept includes an application section that is to be signed by the student. Students carry the card with them but they also sign a copy of this card that is filed in their student record. Signing such a statement when they enter the School of Engineering helps to heighten the student’s perception that they are entering a profession with high standards for conduct.

FIGURE 1: Both sides of the laminated Honor Code card.

We felt that it was important to place the honor code within the context of

professional expectations, so we prefaced the statement of the code with an explanation of its importance. The rules of thumb were adapted to our concerns – especially the first rule. As is the case for cadets, the rules of thumb are printed on the back of the card. (Please note that the wording of the PSE Honor Code statement is almost identical to the West Point statement; we checked with officers at West Point to be sure that this was allowed. The statement is considered to be part of the public domain.)

While knowledge and skill are certainly important to engineering practice, an engineer’s integrity is even more important. You must establish this integrity as a student. The professional engineering community monitors itself to establish trustworthiness or integrity. For that reason:

An engineering student will not lie, cheat, or steal, or tolerate those who do. __________________________________

Rules of thumb:

1. Does this action attempt to deceive anyone or allow anyone to be deceived? Handing in or using

someone else’s work in electronic or any other form is deceiving my instructor. Grades are assigned to assess my grasp of a concept or skill for future use. If I choose to evade the evaluation or grading process in this way I will deceive my instructor, but I will also deceive my future employer, the clients who will depend on my engineering expertise, and the general public.

2. Does this action result in an undue advantage to which I would otherwise not be entitled? 3. Would I be satisfied by the outcome if I were on the receiving end of this action?

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As a part of the introduction to the honor code we present a short case study and involve students in using the “rules of thumb” to evaluate the case study. The case study features a temptation to copy and share electronic data – a temptation that we know will occur in the first course. In this way we are able to address a major problem that we have observed in the past and we are able to show students how such behavior violates every one of the “rules of thumb” that are printed on their laminated cards. We can also discuss with the students how this type of copying destroys the integrity of the evaluation process and ultimately destroys the academic environment. Using this case study (tied to the first course) does two important things. First, it allows us to demonstrate how the card can be used in this class; second, it allows us to clearly tell students what our expectations are in the area of individually prepared work that is presented for evaluation.

FIGURE 2: Spirit of the Honor Concept – as it appears on the inside of the double

card into which the laminated Honor Code card is placed.

The Co-op Program The Padnos School of Engineering (PSE) has a mandatory co-op program. All students apply for secondary admission to the school after completing the engineering fundamentals. This typically occurs at the end of the sophomore year. At that point students interview for co-op positions and are placed with a company beginning with the summer preceding their junior year. They then alternate full-time work and school semesters on a year-around schedule to finish the program at the end of the summer in the senior year with a full year (3 semesters) of work experience. The entire program increases a sense of professionalism as our students begin their work experience as engineers. It also offers a golden opportunity to teach ethics in the context of professionalism.

The Spirit of the Honor Concept The Honor Concept is way of life that affects every part of life – rather than a set of regulations for which violators will be punished. It should extend to all areas of an engineer’s life – personal as well as professional because the habits of the mind (such as integrity or honesty) that rule one area also tend to rule others – especially when under stress. The Honor Concept is pro-active rather than re-active; its main goal is not to punish but to build the level of trust-worthiness or integrity of every member of the engineering community. Students must be trained in the Honor Concept as an essential part of their preparation to practice engineering in an ethical manner. Application: At all times I should consciously do the right thing because it is the right thing to do and not out of fear of punishment. If I, as an engineer, cannot be trusted, no amount of skill or knowledge will be useful to others. Because of the level of public trust placed in engineers, the Honor Concept is absolutely essential to the engineering profession. If I cannot be trusted, I also cannot be tolerated as a member of the professional community of engineers.

Signature/date: _______________________________

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During each co-op semester students have some academic assignments in addition to working. One part of these assignments is always an assigned book with a book report. For the first co-op students read The Unwritten Laws of Engineering,8 published by ASME Press. This short book (59 pages) effectively addresses the topic of professional conduct. Even the appendix of this little book is very helpful for our ethics instruction; it includes the code of ethics for several professional engineering societies such as ASME, IEEE, and ASCE. This works very well for us because we also assign a short ethics case study during the co-op semester. The case study centers on engineering student experiences and it includes questions designed to make the student reference the professional society codes as well as the PSE honor code. At the end of the semester we hold a mandatory meeting where the main activity is small group discussions of the case study with faculty members acting as discussion facilitators. This requires the students to put at least some effort into exploring an ethical issue using the codes of ethics that apply to them as students and also as professionals. The small group discussions allow them to test peer reactions against their own and faculty members have an opportunity to provide mentoring. There is no grade assigned for this discussion; this enables all participants to concentrate on the free exchange of ideas rather than the formalism of grades. The case studies are completed in each of the three co-op semesters and we are working on a collection of case studies based on actual student experiences. A representative case study is given in the next section of this paper.

Using student experiences rather than published professional case studies does seem to make this a more meaningful exercise for students since they are better able to relate to the cases. When the collection of case studies is complete it will parallel the “Hip Pocket Guide” formally used by second year cadets at West Point as they mentor the first year students (plebes) assigned to them. In civilian schools we cannot take advantage of a military command structure, but this is one way to encourage peer mentoring in our school. The fact that we can fold this into the co-op experience which is already a wonderful tool to enhance professionalism, works very well for us. For schools without a formal co-op program this could possibly be incorporated into a required class or student professional society activities.

Finally, in the third (last) co-op semester the assigned book comes from a list of books having a central technical ethics issue. Students are free to choose which book to read, but they are asked to write a report in which they identify the ethical issue, show how the author presents the issue, and comment on the solution that the author presents. Of course they also complete the ethics case study assigned and they are encouraged to discuss the book and the case study with the engineers at work.

Representative Case Study The following is a case study that we have developed. Note that the questions lead students to use the PSE Honor Code as well as professional society honor codes. In the future we hope to add a parallel professional practice case with similar issues in order to enhance the ties to professional practice.

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Ethics Case Study (Note to students: This is a true story. I have changed student and company names. Variations of this story have occurred more than once as students find co-op companies and this has also happened at a working professional level.)

Jean A. had been looking for a co-op company all semester and near the end of the semester she still did not have a company “lined up”. The Co-op Coordinator and a few of the faculty members had been working on setting up contacts for Jean and finally arranged for an interview with Company A. She was scheduled to meet with an engineer with a high level of decision-making responsibility in the company. After the interview he reviewed the work in progress and work scheduled for the near future for the engineering staff and found a possible fit for Jean. This involved outlining the work to be done, assuring that Jean would be able to do the work and learn something in the process, and also identifying a mentor/supervisor on the engineering staff. He was also in contact with the school of engineering to be sure that the proposed work was a good fit to PSE expectations. The job was offered to Jean and she accepted it with some level of relief that she would have a co-op position. The engineer from Company A also made the necessary arrangements with the payroll department and everything was arranged for Jean’s first day at Company A. On her scheduled first day, Jean called the engineer at Company A and said that she would not be coming to work for Company A after all because she had been trying for a long time to get a job at Company B (a competitor for Company A) and they had just called her with an offer. She had decided to accept that offer from Company B (and she expected that Company A would understand and be happy for her).

1. Do you think that the student, Jean, acted in an unprofessional manner, an unethical manner, both, or neither?

2. Support your answer from the following 3 sources: 3. The ASME Society Policy on Ethics 4. The PSE Code of Ethics and Rules of Thumb 5. The Recommended Core Ethical Values that are attached to this memo. 6. How does Jean’s action affect the Padnos School of Engineering and possibly

other students? 7. Do students have responsibilities toward other students and toward the Padnos

School of Engineering? 8. Obviously Company A will view this as a bad experience. What could/should

the Padnos School of Engineering do about this, and in particular how should they approach Company A since they did originally have an interest in the co- op program. Should Company B be informed? (They were not informed in this case…pros and/or cons?)

9. Would anything change if Jean did not tell the truth about Company B and simply made up a story to explain why she would not be coming to work at Company A?

10. When Company A offered the position to Jean and Jean accepted, were binding obligations in place for Jean, for Company A, or both parties…and what is the nature of those obligations? What happens to the work environment when you can no longer trust a person’s word?

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Integrity, Competence, Courage and Compassion These are the virtues by which we hope students, graduates, and faculty of the Padnos School of Engineering are known. Figure 3 shows the document that explains engineering professionalism as related to these four virtues. We have also combined these words into the graphics of a seal for the school shown in figure 4. The center of the seal is a compass – indicating the importance of these virtues in setting the direction of a professional life.

By posting this along with the Honor Concept and the Honor Code in many places, we hope to surround our students with reminders of these foundational ideas. By living these ideas in our own lives, we, as faculty, hope to draw our students into a culture based on a strong sense of personal honor. FIGURE 3: Engineering Professionalism, Four Virtues and Excellence – as posted

and distributed to students.

ENGINEERING PROFESSIONALISM Seymour and Esther Padnos School of Engineering

• Integrity: Trustworthiness – While knowledge and skill are important to engineering

practice, an engineer’s integrity is even more important. An engineer who cannot be trusted also cannot be tolerated as a member of the engineering profession.

• Competence: Superbly prepared for the task at hand – Competence includes knowledge and skill in using tools to accomplish the task at hand as well as the wisdom to select the tools best suited. Competence has a moral dimension: as the field of engineering changes engineers are required to stay current in order to fulfill the promise to practice only where qualified.

• Compassion: To see problems with the heart as well as the head and to act. This includes empathy, the ability to place yourself in someone else’s place and to walk with them as you attempt to understand the problem that you will attempt to solve.

• Courage: Means conquering fear and accomplishing what must be done. When do engineers need courage? They need it whenever they face the unknown – be it technical, social, emotional, or any realm that touches design. Design or effective problem-solving requires courage.

Integrity and Competence are qualities of the intellect or the head, while Compassion and Courage are qualities of the heart. The designs that flow from the

hand of an engineer have their origin in the realm of the head and the heart.

EXCELLENCE in engineering requires mastery of the head, the heart, and the hand.

Iron Ring Ceremony Because of the co-op, engineering students do not finish their academic program until the end of the summer. We looked for some kind of special ceremony to mark this passage from undergraduate study to professional endeavor and we found it in the Iron

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Ring Ceremony. Our students participate in university commencement in the spring but their senior project work and course work is not yet finished, so commencement is not as meaningful for them as it is for students who are actually finished. The ceremony involves the administration of an oath (similar to the original oath written by author Rudyard Kipling) and placing a stainless steel (in the U.S.) ring on the pinky of one’s working hand. The oath reinforces ideas of professional and ethical responsibility in the practice of engineering and the ring is a visible reminder of that oath and of the honor of our profession. Once again, students sign something – a copy of the oath, and their last contact with the undergraduate experience is a reminder of the ethics that forms the foundation of engineering practice. Information about The Order of the Engineer and the Iron Ring Ceremony that is part of it can be found at the following web-site: http://www.order-of-the-engineer.org/index.html.

FIGURE 4: Padnos School of Engineering seal

Volunteer Community Service Projects The elements of our program discussed so far are all required in the curriculum. In addition, we have fostered the development of a number of community service projects involving engineering and administered through the student sections of the professional engineering societies. In her article entitled Teaching vs. Preaching: EC 2000 and the Engineering Ethics Dilemma,2 (p.139) S. Pfatteicher urges educators to clearly distinguish between hopes and expectations when considering student outcomes for teaching in all areas, but in ethics in particular. It is our expectation that students will understand ethics and social responsibility, and that they will be able to think clearly and critically. It is our hope that they will move beyond understanding to some level of action and possibly even advocacy. To encourage students to take this step we have invited them to join us in a number of community service projects.

In each case we present the project as an opportunity to exercise responsible citizenship and we attempt to link it to our professional responsibility to “enhance human welfare” – as required by the professional codes of ethics. For example,

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sponsoring the 5th grade of a local inner-city school is in its fourth year. When we present the opportunity to join the faculty in this project we note that inequities in academic achievement in inner city schools is a problem that affects all citizens. This is something that we can do, and as a reason for action we quote President Hoover: “It (liberty) demands freedom from frozen barriers of class, and equal opportunity for every boy and girl to win that place in the community to which their abilities and character entitle them.”9 This is an idea that we want our students to consider for themselves, but they see it more clearly as they help to provide an opportunity to be competitive to children who might not have this chance under normal conditions.

Not all students volunteer and not all faculty members volunteer, but there is enough involvement to affect the culture in the school. A large number of projects are available with opportunities for students to contribute as little as 20 minutes of time and still have a meaningful experience. When a project is in progress it does become a topic of conversation and it provides an opportunity for students and faculty to engage in thinking about our professional responsibilities to our community. All of our students can benefit from such conversations.

Links to ABET 2000 The overall approach used by PSE to teach ethics has been to embed our ethics teaching into the entire curriculum. By creating a culture in which ethics is a foundational strand we also increase the probability that the strand is picked up in many of the other courses taught in our department. Faculty members who think about ethics can certainly bring up ethical issues as something to consider in any engineering problem – and students who are sensitive to ethical issues may very well introduce them without the instructor’s prompt.

When our students do take the required ethics class from a philosophy professor they are in a better position to learn more because they have thought about many of the issues within the context of engineering. It is difficult to quantify this but it is definitely an intangible benefit of our approach.

The spirit of the ABET EC 2000 Criteria is to build certain strands into an overall curriculum. Criteria f (understanding of professional and ethical responsibility) and h (broad education necessary to understand the impact of engineering solutions in a global and societal context) are directly addressed by the approach to teaching ethics presented in this paper. The interplay between topics formally covered in class and topics presented in a professional work context (co-op) allows us to create an environment in which ethics becomes an essential element of our program.

In essence we have shifted our focus from delivering a prescribed content to providing a context to practice the profession of engineering. This does not mean that we are free to ignore content, instead we bring the content to the students in the more meaningful context of engineering practice. Sometimes this may mean that we will lose some content, but then we will emphasize criterion i by telling the student where they must look to find the content not directly required for the project at hand. All of the

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criteria that are difficult to address in a more traditional approach to engineering education: d,f,g,h,i,and j can be effectively addressed by this approach.

Summary This paper presents the approach to teaching ethics that is currently in progress in the Padnos School of Engineering. Are we finished with our work? Certainly not! We are, however, learning and we are open to learning more and changing our approach if a better idea is presented. What we have attempted to do is to create a culture in which the responsible and ethical practice of our profession is taught from the very beginning of our program. The students who are taught in this way will develop the habits of the mind that will enable them to practice engineering in an ethical manner. Acknowledgment: The author wishes to acknowledge the assistance provided by discussions with faculty members of the United States Military Academy at West Point.

REFERENCES 1. King Solomon, The Bible, Proverbs 22, verse 6. 2. Pfatteicher, S. (2001) Teaching vs. Preaching: EC 2000 and the Engineering Ethics Dilemma,

Journal of Engineering Education 90 (No1, Jan.). 3. Stephan, K. (1999) A Survey of Ethics-Related Instruction in U.S. Engineering Programs,

Journal of Engineering Education 88 (No.4, Oct.): 460. 4. Florman, S. (1987) The Civilized Engineer, St. Martins Press, New York, pp 101-109. 5. Devon, R. (1999) Toward a Social Ethics of Engineering: The Norms of Engagement, Journal

of Engineering Education 88 (No.1, Jan.): 89. 6. Donnithorne, L. (1993) The West Point Way of Leadership, Doubleday Publ., New York, p 9. 7. Fleischmann, S.T.(editor) Teaching Environmentally Responsible Design, Volume available

from the Padnos School of Engineering by request, PSE, GVSU 301 West Fulton Street, Grand Rapids, MI 49504, USA.

8. King, W.J., The Unwritten Laws of Engineering, Available from ASME Press, New York, New York, ISBN 0-7918-0162-4

9. Hoover, H., American Individualism & The Challenge to Liberty, Hoover Presidential Library Association, Publ., 1989, p. 66.