Institutional Transformation Approach to STEM Ethics Education: An Exploratory Study of NSF-funded Institutional Transformation Projects IntroductionThere is consensus that the integration of ethics into STEM curricula is critical for cultivatingcultures for ethical practices in STEM research. We argue that the establishment of the Ethicsand Responsible Research (ER2) program, previously known as Cultivating Cultures for EthicalSTEM (CCE-STEM), at NSF was driven by a cultural perspective on ethics education.According to the most recent version of its solicitation, A comprehensive approach to ethical STEM not only influences individual behavior, but it also maintains and fosters an ethical
Education & Innovation at Texas A&M. Her education research interests are in active learning, inclusive teaching, inclusive teaching, project-based learning, and communities of practice.Hillary E. Merzdorf, Texas A&M University College of Engineering ©American Society for Engineering Education, 2024 A Student-Led Ethics Deep Dive, Discussion, and Content Generation Ethics Assignment in Computer Science & Engineering CapstoneAbstractAs senior capstone design represents the culmination of the knowledge and understanding gainedthroughout the four-year degree program, it has significant prominence in ensuring that wegraduate ethical and professional engineers. We implemented a
Paper ID #43553Benchmarking a Foundation for Improving Psychological Safety in TeamsDr. Michelle Marincel Payne, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology Dr. Michelle Marincel Payne is an Associate Professor in the Civil and Environmental Engineering at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. She earned her Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, her M.S. in Environmental Engineering from Missouri University of Science and Technology, and her B.S. in Nuclear Engineering from the University of Missouri-Rolla (same school, different name). At Rose-Hulman, Michelle is leading a project
Paper ID #43419Engineering a Bridge Across Cultures: Insights to Support Dialogue withEngineering Professionals on Ethical and Social Design ConsiderationsMs. Tiffany Smith, NASA Tiffany Smith serves as NASA’s Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO) and Director of the Office of the Chief Engineer’s Academy of Program/Project and Engineering Leadership (APPEL). Ms. Smith is responsible for managing NASA’s APPEL Knowledge Services learning and development program, providing strategic communications and continuous learning to project management and systems engineering personnel, and overseeing knowledge services across the agency in
to the prosperity and future developmentof the country. They play an important role in the process of national engineering educationmoving towards practice and engineering technology transforming towards innovation. Toachieve the transformation of engineering education, it is necessary to break the phenomenonof "engineering only", break down the barriers between humanities and social sciences andscience and technology, and cultivate innovative and composite engineers who can adapt topractical needs. In 2016, China became a formal signatory to the Washington Accord and thesolid promotion of the New Engineering Project provided an important opportunity for Chinato move towards becoming a strong engineering education country [2]. The Washington
Paper ID #43910Educating the Whole Engineer: Leveraging Communication Skills to CultivateEthical Leadership CharacterMrs. Farnoosh B. Brock, Prolific Living Inc. Farnoosh Brock went from electrical engineer and project manager at a Fortune 100 to an entrepreneur, published author (4 books), speaker and trainer in 2011. She has coached and trained hundreds of professionals at all levels of the organizations in their Mindset, Leadership and Communication Skills. She delivers her workshops at universities such as Johns Hopkins, Duke and Wake Forest and has spoken her message at many places such as Google, Cisco, MetLife, SAS
settings to professional careers, they facethe imperative task of acquiring not only technical expertise but also hands-on experience andpractical insights to be effective in their engineering work. This experiential learningencompasses problem-solving, critical thinking, project management, effective communication,collaboration with multidisciplinary teams, adaptability to industry trends, and a profoundunderstanding of real-world constraints and challenges and therefore involves addressing variousethical dilemmas. In today's society, heightened awareness and expectations concerning ethicaland equity issues underscore the need to assess the preparedness of early-career engineers tonavigate this complex landscape in their professional journeys. To
Medal for Research.Casey Gibson, National Academy of Engineering Casey Gibson, M.S., is an Associate Program Officer at the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) of U.S. National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine. Gibson contributes to multiple NAE and cross-Academies initiatives, focusing primarily on the Cultural, Ethical, Social, and Environmental Responsibility in Engineering program. Gibson completed her M.S. from the Colorado School of Mines as a member of the inaugural cohort in Humanitarian Engineering and Science (HES). In the HES program, Gibson specialized in Environmental Engineering and conducted research under the NSF-funded ”Responsible Mining, Resilient Communities” project in Colombia
in managerial programs, theprofessional nature of the discipline and the general characteristics of undergraduates supports ourpoint of view that providing the ethics training in the context of students’ summer research projectswill enhance their learning and retention. The proposed project will build on this lesson in thesciences by demonstrating the value of context-based training. The tech ethics course addresses thelearning of the issues and the question-directed framework. Then the question-directed frameworkis directly applied to the students’ research project, connecting the learning to their professionalpractice. I believe, strongly, that this type of contextualizing will result in lifetime learning. Olimpo et al. [5] conducted a
coverage is included in programs’ cores, how is the learning operationalized toreinforce it as being integral to engineering leadership practice? Proposals for embedding ethicsinstruction more integrally within engineering coursework have included increasing the emphasison human-centric approaches to design on engineering team projects [10, 17], mitigating orreducing the isolation of ethics instruction from other aspects of courses and projects [8, 13], andincreasing the use of experiential learning approaches for ethics instruction [12, 17 - 20], among 18 19others. As this paper’s central focus, we illustrate how an ethical reasoning challenge can
knowledge andsociocultural issues in their field. For example, Franquesa [42], who obtained a Bachelor’sdegree in computer science engineering and a Master’s degree in sustainability, implementedservice-learning activities where students fixed and updated old (and sometimes broken)computers for local communities; Holloway [43], who was the department chair in Electrical andComputer Engineering and the director of an institute bringing policy-side perspectives on powerand energy, offered a class on global energy issues; and Bielefeldt [44], who holds a PhD in civilengineering and is interested in sustainability and social responsibility in engineering, employedtwo case studies consisting of a controversial local water supply project and Hurricane
solution should follow a specific format, such as filling specific fields in a table and/or preparing a presentation for 5 min to explain the solution. We used this kind of assignment in a Machine learning course. • For group project assignments, students are required to present either a research idea or a programming project. The presentation is presented in-person for on-site courses. In the case of online courses, two different approaches are available. The first approach involves organizing a Zoom meeting where students present their work and respond to questions. Alternatively, the second approach entails recording the presentation with their voices accompanying each slide. Other group
Paper ID #42216Developing a Team-Based Regulatory Framework for Mobility EngineeringProfessionalsMs. MAN LIANG, University of Maryland College Park Man Liang is a PhD student in Civil Engineering at the University of Maryland. She has over 3 years of working experience as a civil engineer conducting independent engineering designs for residential, commercial, institutional projects in the states of Ohio, Kentucky, Wisconsin, Texas, and etc. She specializes in site surveys, roadway engineering, pavement design, traffic analysis, site layout, site grading, sustainable stormwater management, utility connections, erosion and
engineering degree programs.Undergraduate engineering curricula include engineering ethics through specialized courses andprogram-wide integration. While some engineering programs embed one stand-alone ethicscourse within a curriculum, other programs embed ethics modules across a few courses within acurriculum. Very few engineering programs weave engineering ethics across a four-yearundergraduate curriculum in a concerted and developmental way [7]. Engineering ethics taughtin stand-alone courses is usually offered within the first two years of study [4]. According toDavis [6], several engineering programs also embed ethical modules into technical writing andcommunication seminars, senior capstone projects, and introduction to engineering courses
approaches to teaching ethics. For many years, these programshave included an engineering ethics course as part of the first-year general education curriculum.Typically, the course covers normative ethical theories, a code of ethics, and three famous casestudies: The Challenger Disaster, SDI: A Violation of Professional Responsibility, and GilbaneGold. Students are assessed based on their report-writing skills, a method that can disadvantageinternational students. Additionally, senior students are expected to evaluate the ethical issues intheir capstone project designs. However, the generic approach to teaching ethics often results inless student engagement and superficial learning [11]. Graduating students are expected topossess in-depth knowledge
values and the need for a morecaring, aware, and engaged engineering community by adapting the Compassionate Engagement andAction Scales to the engineering context. The results may facilitate new research pathways withinengineering education (i.e., What factors influence compassionate behaviors, and how can they beencouraged?). Ultimately, the study advocates for a broader approach to engineering ethics that embracescompassionate values in the conception, design, and implementation of engineering projects. Introduction.In engineering, the prevailing discourse often concerns technical proficiency, innovation, and ethicalconsiderations. Rarely, however, is compassion explicitly acknowledged as a
. Agreeableness involvespositive interactions with people. Finally, openness to ideas allows for an individual to seek outcreative solutions to helping others and the inclusion of groups that are often overlooked.This study uses longitudinal interviews with engineering students and early-career engineers atthree timepoints over seven years to characterize the moral exemplars selected by participantsand, in turn, to use these moral exemplars as a tool for assessing the ethical perceptions of theinterviewees. This study is part of a series of ongoing longitudinal projects focused onengineering students’ and early-career professionals’ views of engineering ethics and socialresponsibility [13], [14].MethodsThis study is part of a longitudinal research
Paper ID #43210Choreographing Virtue: The Role of Situatedness and Layering in BuildingMoral Muscle Memory in Engineering Ethics EducationDr. Sergio Guillen Grillo, University of Virginia Sergio GUILLEN ´ GRILLO, Ph.D., is an experienced public policy, conflict resolution and democratic deliberation scholar and practitioner who has worked extensively in social and environmental policy issues. He is an Assistant Professor in Engineering and Society at the University of Virginia. He has worked as a Project Director and Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist at the Foundation for Peace and Democracy (FUNPADEM). He
require ethics instruction: Principles of Engineering Design, a lowerdivision class, and Engineering Design Project II, an upper division class that is the second halfof the yearlong senior capstone project. Engineering codes of ethics are introduced in Principlesof Engineering Design, and the connection between these codes and the general educationcontent from Core is discussed in detail in the subsequent sections. In Materials Science andEngineering, an upper division elective, students are given assignments to consider the past andfuture impacts of materials development on society and to consider how the production ofmaterials and applications of materials might promote or violate various ethical standards. InStatics, a lower division
-created by a dedicated working group of educators fromdiverse higher education institutions: from new unconventional universities to traditionallong-standing establishments and practicing engineers from various industries and businesses.The current toolkit content comprises of guidance, teaching resources (case studies andlinked activities), an interactive curriculum map, and descriptions of practice. The toolkit waslaunched in February 2022 and the first steps of an impact assessment on the project areunderway. Feeding into this assessment is metadata on the use of the website and toolkit,which is continually being collated. This includes collecting geographical and temporal datato identify regional interests in ethical topics and frequency of
these universities who serve asconsultants on the research project. The email included a link to the survey, with a briefdescription of the research, confirmation of participant age, and consent to have their responsesused for research purposes. This research project and its associated materials were reviewed andapproved by the Colorado School of Mine’s IRB. The survey consisted of four parts, theEngineering and Science Issues Test (ESIT) to measure ethical reasoning [22], MoralFoundations Questionnaire (MFQ) to measure moral intuitions [23], questions about the natureof values and ethical behaviors in engineering and technology [24], and demographic items.The ESIT is a neo-Kohlbergian measure that asks participants to decide on
its own unique way, adapting it to fitthe specific context and demands of the field. In their final year, all students complete a capstonecourse, which allows students to apply their accumulated knowledge in a practical, project-basedcontext. Students are required to not only focus on the technical aspects of design, but also theethical and societal implications of their decisions, as per ABET requirements.The Engineering Ethics Reasoning Instrument (EERI) was assigned as a homework assignmentfor data collection purposes. This instrument measures two key metrics: the P score and the N2score. The EERI was administered as a mandatory component of required courses in both thefirst and fourth years of the undergraduate engineering curriculum. The
. Aaron W. Johnson, University of Michigan Aaron W. Johnson (he/him) is an Assistant Professor in the Aerospace Engineering Department and a Core Faculty member of the Engineering Education Research Program at the University of Michigan. His lab’s design-based research focuses on how to re-contextualize engineering science engineering courses to better reflect and prepare students for the reality of ill-defined, sociotechnical engineering practice. Their current projects include studying and designing classroom interventions around macroethical issues in aerospace engineering and the productive beginnings of engineering judgment as students create and use mathematical models. Aaron holds a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering
undergraduateengineering students. By immersing players in the role of a Mars settlement engineer, the gamecontextualizes ethical dilemmas within a realistic engineering project. Players are not merelypresented with abstract right or wrong choices; instead, they must employ personal reasoning andcontext-dependent justifications in their decision-making process. Each game segment concludeswith a pivotal decision, influencing the storyline and leading to various potential endings. Marsis novel in its approach to teaching engineering ethics. Unlike traditional methods for teachingethics such as exposing students to ethical standards, using case studies, and discussion activities[6], which often present decontextualized scenarios, Mars offers a rich, interconnected
minimize the effects ofnegative social identification can provide socialization opportunities to students. Additionally,establishing self-belief in engineering students can be accomplished by socialization of students;allowing them to observe one another’s goal setting and accomplishing those goals will allowthem to model their behaviors after each other. Consider long-term, independent projects thatmodel professional projects which require incremental goal setting and accomplishments; oftenthese take place in capstone or senior design projects, but introduction to these types of projectsearlier not only expose students to various types of engineering careers, but also allow them toexercise self-belief in lower-stakes opportunities.Finally, one
. Related to curiositya) Develop a propensity to ask MORE questions.b) Question information that is given without sufficient justification.c) Recognize and explore knowledge gaps.d) Recognize problems with an open mindset and explore opportunities with passion.e) Be able to self-reflect and evaluate preconceived ideas, thoughts, and accepted solutions.f) Explore multiple solution paths.g) Gather data to support and refute ideas.h) Suspend initial judgement on new ideas.i) Take ownership of, and express interest in topic/expertise/project.2. Related to connectionsa) Understand ramifications (technical and nontechnical) of decisions.b) Identify and evaluate sources of information.c) Connect life experiences with dilemmas.d) Connect content from
Samvada International Research Institute which offers consultancy services to institutions of research and higher education around the world on designing research tracks, research teaching and research projects. His first book The Integral Philosophy of Aurobindo: Hermeneutics and the Study of Religion was published by Routledge, Oxon in 2017. For more information, please visit: https://plaksha.edu.in/faculty-details/dr-brainerd-princeMr. B. Lallian Ngura, Centre for Thinking Language and Communication (CTLC), Plaksha University B. Lallianngura has completed post-graduate studies in philosophy from the University of Delhi. He is pursuing doctoral research in philosophy at IIT Bombay. He is a part of the research team at
often leads to mediocre performance in a working environment despite the students’education. Thus, it is imperative to teach professional skills to students.Ethics is a professional skill that holds great importance for engineers and is evaluated for theprofessional engineer designation [4]. During their engineering studies, students are often notdeeply exposed to ethical constructs until their final year. This can result in students designingproducts and projects without considering the ethical implications their creations may have.Therefore, a module focused on the relevance of ethics to engineering was developed for incomingfirst-year students to expose them to ethical frameworks.LITERATURE REVIEWIn traditional settings of large lecture
I’m not smart. I’ve pretended to know something when I really didn’t because I didn’t want to be judged.Transfer Integrity Sincere One time I crossed the line and let a project fail on a team to spite one person. I crossed the line because I didn't put my recommendations first and acted in a self-interest way. This drove a rift within the team and did not demonstrate any positive virtue by me. I suppose that I wanted to show that I
educator, he brings professional experience as an engineer and project management from industry and government settings.Dr. Christian B. Miller, Wake Forest University A.C. Reid Professor of PhilosophyDr. Olga Pierrakos, Wake Forest University Dr. Olga Pierrakos is a rotating STEM Education Program Director in the Division of Undergraduate Education at the National Science Foundation (a second stint). Olga is also the Founding Chair (2017-2022) and a Professor of Wake Forest Engineering. With a unique vision to Educate the Whole Engineer and a commitment to Human Flourishing, Olga led Wake Forest Engineering to be ranked as one of the top (14th) ”Best Undergraduate Engineering Programs” by US News Report (2023). With