each co-op semester

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.

Embedding Ethics into an Engineering Curriculum

Science and Engineering Ethics, Volume 10, Issue 2, 2004 377

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).