Work in Progress: Personalizing Engineering Ethics through the  Individual Stories of Engineers and People Impacted

Angela Bielefeldt

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Conference: 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Minneapolis, MN
Publication Date: August 23, 2022
Start Date: June 26, 2022
End Date: June 29, 2022
Conference Session: Engineering Ethics Division: Approaches to Ethics Education (Part 2)
Page Count: 21
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--41337
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/41337
Download Count: 707

Paper Authors

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Angela Bielefeldt University of Colorado Boulder

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Angela Bielefeldt, Ph.D., P.E., is a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder (CU) in the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering (CEAE). She is also the Director for the Engineering Plus program, which is in the process of being renamed to Integrated Design Engineering. Bielefeldt also serves as the co-director for the Engineering Education and AI-Augmented Learning Integrated Research Theme (IRT) at CU. She has been a faculty member at CU since 1996, serving in various roles including Faculty Director of the Sustainable By Design Residential Academic Program (2014-2017), Director of the Environmental Engineering program (2006-2010), and ABET Assessment Coordinator for the CEAE Department (2008-2018). Bielefeldt is active in the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), serving on the Civil Engineering Program Criteria Task Committee (2019-2022) and the Body of Knowledge 3 Task Committee (2016-2018). She is the Senior Editor for the International Journal for Service Learning in Engineering (IJSLE) and a Deputy Editor for the ASCE Journal of Civil Engineering Education. Her research focuses on engineering education, including ethics, social responsibility, sustainable engineering, and community engagement. Bielefeldt is also a Fellow of the American Society for Engineering Education.

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Abstract

Engineering ethics is grounded in the responsibility of engineers for human safety and welfare. Traditional approaches that introduce the code of ethics or present case studies often emphasize the collective actions of engineers and their impacts on society broadly. In fact, many of the engineering disaster case studies take a very numerical approach, rather than sharing the stories of individuals who have been harmed and naming the engineers responsible. An alternative teaching approach is to bring in the personal stories of both individual engineers and the people who have been impacted by engineering in positive and negative ways. This personal approach may be more effective in activating emotions and aligns with Bratton’s (2004) Model of Affective Morality and Scholl et al.’s (2016) core affect model. Further, emotional responses may be heightened by seeing the individuals tell their own stories rather than reading text-based narratives. The collective and individual perspectives embedded within the teaching methods for engineering ethics that the author has integrated in civil/environmental engineering courses for undergraduate students are shared and critiqued. Individual examples from the perspective of engineers include: the personal story of Marc Edwards who fought for communities exposed to lead in drinking water in both Washington DC and Flint Michigan, moral exemplars from the Online Ethics Center (William LeMessurier, Fred Cuny, Inez Austin), and an interview with Jack Gillum (a structural engineer who lost his P.E. license due to the Hyatt-Regency walkway collapse). Individuals from the public who have been negatively impacted by engineering and/or engineers have been given a voice via a video from a panel with five members of different communities (Lena Young-Green, Albert P. Naquin, E. Yvonne Lewis, Robert Miranda, Sydney Brown) and interviews with individuals injured in the Hyatt-Regency walkway collapse. Evidence for the impact on students from teaching methods that focused on personal stories in comparison to depersonalized approaches is demonstrated using reflective statements from students and survey results. It is believed that including personal stories when teaching engineering ethics holds promise for impacting the ethical awareness and reasoning abilities of students.

Citation
Format

Bielefeldt, A. (2022, August), Work in Progress: Personalizing Engineering Ethics through the Individual Stories of Engineers and People Impacted Paper presented at 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Minneapolis, MN. 10.18260/1-2--41337

TY - CPAPER
AB - Engineering ethics is grounded in the responsibility of engineers for human safety and welfare. Traditional approaches that introduce the code of ethics or present case studies often emphasize the collective actions of engineers and their impacts on society broadly. In fact, many of the engineering disaster case studies take a very numerical approach, rather than sharing the stories of individuals who have been harmed and naming the engineers responsible. An alternative teaching approach is to bring in the personal stories of both individual engineers and the people who have been impacted by engineering in positive and negative ways. This personal approach may be more effective in activating emotions and aligns with Bratton’s (2004) Model of Affective Morality and Scholl et al.’s (2016) core affect model. Further, emotional responses may be heightened by seeing the individuals tell their own stories rather than reading text-based narratives. The collective and individual perspectives embedded within the teaching methods for engineering ethics that the author has integrated in civil/environmental engineering courses for undergraduate students are shared and critiqued. Individual examples from the perspective of engineers include: the personal story of Marc Edwards who fought for communities exposed to lead in drinking water in both Washington DC and Flint Michigan, moral exemplars from the Online Ethics Center (William LeMessurier, Fred Cuny, Inez Austin), and an interview with Jack Gillum (a structural engineer who lost his P.E. license due to the Hyatt-Regency walkway collapse). Individuals from the public who have been negatively impacted by engineering and/or engineers have been given a voice via a video from a panel with five members of different communities (Lena Young-Green, Albert P. Naquin, E. Yvonne Lewis, Robert Miranda, Sydney Brown) and interviews with individuals injured in the Hyatt-Regency walkway collapse. Evidence for the impact on students from teaching methods that focused on personal stories in comparison to depersonalized approaches is demonstrated using reflective statements from students and survey results. It is believed that including personal stories when teaching engineering ethics holds promise for impacting the ethical awareness and reasoning abilities of students.
AU - Angela Bielefeldt
CY - Minneapolis, MN
DA - 2022/08/23
PB - ASEE Conferences
TI - Work in Progress: Personalizing Engineering Ethics through the Individual Stories of Engineers and People Impacted
UR - https://peer.asee.org/41337
DO - 10.18260/1-2--41337
ER -