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Session 3441

Engineering Ethics and the Drexel University Library: A Collaborative Teaching Partnership

Jay Bhatt, Mark Manion, & Eli Fromm Drexel University

Abstract

At Drexel University, the present undergraduate engineering curriculum has evolved from the Enhanced Educational Experience for Engineering Students (E4) project and the Gateway Engineering Education Coalition, both National Science Foundation (NSF) funded initiatives to re-engineer undergraduate engineering education. Since its institutionalization in 1994, the curriculum has served as a model for an integrated lower-division engineering curriculum. One aspect of engineering education proposed in this curriculum was “addressing ethics in the context of an engineering issue”. To accomplish this goal, courses were designed with engineering ethics topics embedded within the syllabus.

In parallel, the past decade has seen extensive growth in the number of electronic journals such as those from the IEEE, and electronic books available as subscription based library electronic resources. Along with the web, this has created an information overload that is now a major source of confusion among students. This paper discusses an effort to integrate these resources into coursework, as collaborative partnerships among the faculty, the library and students. We describe various materials used for teaching ethics, library created web-based instruction, librarian consultations with students to help them find various sources of information for engineering ethics, and in the process target ABET requirements of lifelong learning.

I. A Brief History of Engineering Ethics at Drexel

In 1988 Drexel University’s College of Engineering began an experiment to dramatically restructure the undergraduate engineering program. The restructuring went well beyond curricular issues alone to address the relationship of the many aspects of a student’s program to one another and to the general educational culture. At the core of this restructuring were several concepts:

• The vertical integration of basic math and sciences interwoven and concurrent with an engineering intellectual centerpiece to develop the theoretical base around the engineering intellectual issue. • Introducing engineering early and thus providing the student with a professional context for the foundation studies of mathematics and sciences. • A movement from the traditional sequential layered approach of independent and somewhat isolated courses to an integrated whole from the first day of the student’s college experience.

“Proceedings of the 2004 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2004, American Society for Engineering Education"

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Manion, M., & Fromm, E., & Bhatt, J. (2004, June), Engineering Ethics, The Drexel Engineering Curriculum And The Library – A Collaborative Teaching Partnership Paper presented at 2004 Annual Conference, Salt Lake City, Utah. 10.18260/1-2--13986