Riley, C., & Howes, F., & Rohwer, Y. (2022, August), Student Responses to a Gender-Neutral Engineering Ethics Case Study  Paper presented at 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Minneapolis, MN. 10.18260/1-2--40965

\bibitem{asee_peer_40965}
  Riley, C., \& Howes, F., \& Rohwer, Y. (2022, August), \emph{Student Responses to a Gender-Neutral Engineering Ethics Case Study}
  Paper presented at 2022 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition, Minneapolis, MN.
  10.18260/1-2--40965

Charles Riley, Franny Howes, and Yasha Rohwer.  "Student Responses to a Gender-Neutral Engineering Ethics Case Study".  2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Minneapolis, MN, 2022, August.  ASEE Conferences, 2022.  https://peer.asee.org/40965 Internet.  22 Feb, 2025

\bibitem{asee_peer_40965}
  Charles Riley, Franny Howes, and Yasha Rohwer.
  "Student Responses to a Gender-Neutral Engineering Ethics Case Study".
  \emph{2022 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition, Minneapolis, MN, 2022, August}.
  ASEE Conferences, 2022.
  https://peer.asee.org/40965 Internet.  22 Feb, 2025

@INPROCEEDINGS{asee_peer_40965
author = "Charles Riley, Franny Howes, and Yasha Rohwer"
title = "Student Responses to a Gender-Neutral Engineering Ethics Case Study"
booktitle = "2022 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition"
year = "2022"
month = "August"
address = "Minneapolis, MN"
publisher = "ASEE Conferences"
note = {https://peer.asee.org/40965}
number = {10.18260/1-2--40965}
}

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - Gender-neutral pronouns, particularly singular they, are becoming increasingly visible. Engineering texts do not often require consideration of gender when they treat technical content, but social considerations in engineering education regularly rely on case studies. Ethics case studies are a common approach to teaching ethical reasoning to engineering students and feature individuals who must make a choice in a difficult ethical reasoning scenario. The evolution of such case studies to feature female characters more equitably has occurred with gender equity efforts in engineering education. Further evolution to support the full gender spectrum will require similar advancements and changes to education practice. 

This paper describes an effort to modify an existing engineering ethics case study to use singular they pronouns to refer to the named main character and unnamed supervisor. The more general client, a county public works department, was also a gender-neutral character. An analysis of the resulting responses by students is presented including an examination of gender attribution to both the protagonist engineer, their supervisor, and their client. The engineer was gendered in all but two student responses, with most applying he/him pronouns and only three out of 23 students applying she/her pronouns. Only five students self-reported after the fact that they recognized the gender-neutral presentation of the case study statement. This paper generates many questions, but the results demonstrate a distinct bias that will require effort on the part of engineering educators and the profession to overcome. Suggestions to improve engineering ethics instruction include preparing ethics case studies with greater gender representation in characters and preparing ethics assessments as role playing exercises that put students in the shoes of the protagonist rather than asking them to critique another’s actions. 

AU  - Charles Riley
AU  - Franny Howes
AU  - Yasha Rohwer
CY  - Minneapolis, MN
DA  - 2022/08/23
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Student Responses to a Gender-Neutral Engineering Ethics Case Study
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/40965
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--40965
ER  -