Material and Energy Balances and Character Development: An Investigation of Student Responses to Intentional Virtue Education in a Traditional Chemical Engineering Course

Victoria E Goodrich

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Conference: 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Portland, Oregon
Publication Date: June 23, 2024
Start Date: June 23, 2024
End Date: July 12, 2024
Conference Session: Cultivating Community, Wellness, and Character Development
Tagged Division: Chemical Engineering Division (ChED)
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/47763

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Paper Authors

biography

Victoria E Goodrich University of Notre Dame

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Dr. Victoria Goodrich is a Teaching Professor in the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering department at the University of Notre Dame. She holds a BS in Chemical Engineering from the University of Oklahoma and a MS and PhD in Chemical Engineering from Notre Dame.

In her role as a teaching professor, she teaches hands-on courses across the chemical engineering curriculum. Her educational research focuses on student belonging in engineering classrooms, hands-on learning, and team/group dynamics.

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Abstract

Engineering education has long held that along with cultivating engineers with solid technical skills, programs must also develop students to be safe, ethical, and community engaged professionals. This has been emphasized time and again through professional organizations across all engineering disciplines and within the ABET accreditation structure. Specifically, these goals are spelled out in ABET student outcomes 2, 4, and 5[1]:

(2) an ability to apply engineering design to produce solutions that meet specified needs with consideration of public health, safety, and welfare, as well as global, cultural, social, environmental, and economic factors; (4) an ability to recognize ethical and professional responsibilities in engineering situations and make informed judgments, which must consider the impact of engineering solutions in global, economic, environmental, and societal contexts; (5) an ability to function effectively on a team whose members together provide leadership, create a collaborative and inclusive environment, establish goals, plan tasks, and meet objectives.

These emphasize ethics and values of students as crucial to earning an engineering degree. However, at many schools these discussions are saved for specific courses on ethics or design rather than intentional integration across the degree. This paper explores the intentional and explicit inclusion of character and virtue building in the context of a traditional chemical engineering courses during the sophomore year. Student taking their first chemical engineering specific course, Introduction to Chemical Engineering Processes, were asked to reflect throughout the semester on the importance of virtue/character in their development as a chemical engineer. These reflections were graded work within the class and either replaced or augmented traditional engineering problems. The material included: • A pre-semester survey including questions on what students believe to be important “skills, values, and attributes” of working engineers, • Homework problems across 3 assignments requiring student reflection on virtue and character development and a self-assessment, • Short answer exam question probing how they have intentionally worked on a virtue during the semester, and • A final homework and end of semester survey reflecting on this experience and again answering what they believe are important “skills, values, and attributes” of working engineers.

Additionally, a control group of the same course but a different instructor’s section was given both the pre-semester and end of semester survey, but had no value/character instruction during the rest of the class.

Qualitative feedback from these assignments were collected and thematically coded to form an introductory answer to the following research questions:

1. What do incoming sophomore level students view as the most important silks, virtues, and attributes of working chemical engineers? 2. Does intentional inclusion of virtue and character development in a class have any effect on student perception? 3. In self-assessment, what values do students identify as strengths and weaknesses? Do those self-assessments change over the course of the semester? Are there differences by demographic information?

Citation
Format

Goodrich, V. E. (2024, June), Material and Energy Balances and Character Development: An Investigation of Student Responses to Intentional Virtue Education in a Traditional Chemical Engineering Course Paper presented at 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Portland, Oregon. https://peer.asee.org/47763

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - Engineering education has long held that along with cultivating engineers with solid technical skills, programs must also develop students to be safe, ethical, and community engaged professionals. This has been emphasized time and again through professional organizations across all engineering disciplines and within the ABET accreditation structure. Specifically, these goals are spelled out in ABET student outcomes 2, 4, and 5[1]: 

(2) an ability to apply engineering design to produce solutions that meet specified needs with consideration of public health, safety, and welfare, as well as global, cultural, social, environmental, and economic factors;
(4) an ability to recognize ethical and professional responsibilities in engineering situations and make informed judgments, which must consider the impact of engineering solutions in global, economic, environmental, and societal contexts;
(5) an ability to function effectively on a team whose members together provide leadership, create a collaborative and inclusive environment, establish goals, plan tasks, and meet objectives.

These emphasize ethics and values of students as crucial to earning an engineering degree. However, at many schools these discussions are saved for specific courses on ethics or design rather than intentional integration across the degree. This paper explores the intentional and explicit inclusion of character and virtue building in the context of a traditional chemical engineering courses during the sophomore year.
Student taking their first chemical engineering specific course, Introduction to Chemical Engineering Processes, were asked to reflect throughout the semester on the importance of virtue/character in their development as a chemical engineer. These reflections were graded work within the class and either replaced or augmented traditional engineering problems. The material included:
•	A pre-semester survey including questions on what students believe to be important “skills, values, and attributes” of working engineers,
•	Homework problems across 3 assignments requiring student reflection on virtue and character development and a self-assessment,
•	Short answer exam question probing how they have intentionally worked on a virtue during the semester, and
•	A final homework and end of semester survey reflecting on this experience and again answering what they believe are important “skills, values, and attributes” of working engineers.

Additionally, a control group of the same course but a different instructor’s section was given both the pre-semester and end of semester survey, but had no value/character instruction during the rest of the class.

Qualitative feedback from these assignments were collected and thematically coded to form an introductory answer to the following research questions:

1.	What do incoming sophomore level students view as the most important silks, virtues, and attributes of working chemical engineers?
2.	Does intentional inclusion of virtue and character development in a class have any effect on student perception?
3.	In self-assessment, what values do students identify as strengths and weaknesses? Do those self-assessments change over the course of the semester? Are there differences by demographic information? 


AU  - Victoria E Goodrich
CY  - Portland, Oregon
DA  - 2024/06/23
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Material and Energy Balances and Character Development: An Investigation of Student Responses to Intentional Virtue Education in a Traditional Chemical Engineering Course
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/47763
ER  -