Ethics Courses Trending at Graduate Engineering Schools

Ethics Courses Trending at Graduate Engineering Schools

Although some students say engineering schools ignore ethics, that appears to be changing.

When Liz Boatman saw a copy of Ethics in Engineering atop a trash can at the University of Californiaâ€"Berkeley's College of Engineering in fall 2011, the materials science and engineering doctoral candidate saw a metaphor for what she perceived as Berkeley's neglect of ethics in engineering. Half a year later, Boatman still stands by an article she wrote for Berkeley Science Review, "Engineering: Throwing Our Ethics into the Trash (Literally)." 

"It's as if the faculty prefer to operate under the premise that ethics conscientiousness is simply implied by being an engineer, although nothing could be further from the truth," she says. "While it is true that our courses weave in ethical components, simply discussing 'factors of safety' for a design problem or receiving isolated sexual harassment training for teaching preparation is an ethical education that falls far short of serious preparation for confronting ethical dilemmas." 

Engineers must hold public safety "paramount," be truthful, and only perform services in their areas of competence, according to the National Society of Professional Engineers' Code of Ethics for Engineers. Yet ethics appears to constitute a "minimal component" of engineering education at most large research institutions, while private schoolsâ€"which hold social values to higher standardsâ€"have better ethics track records, according to Boatman. 

But engineering faculty say graduate engineering programs are starting to focus more on ethics, particularly in light of recent ethics guidelines from ABET (previously known as the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology). Those guidelines require that schools provide students "an understanding of professional and ethical responsibility," according to the ABET site. 

[Read about how business schools increasingly require students to study ethics.] 

The University of Utah is one of the schools taking the ABET guidelines seriously, says David Pershing, U of U's president and a chemical engineering professor. 

"This is not because students of today are inherently less ethical, but rather because the ethical dilemmas they are likely to face are more complex and the consequences are much more severe," he says. "Corporate engineers who violate environmental laws can now face criminal charges with major penalties." 

Pershing advises students who are applying to graduate engineering programs to check whether prospective schools are among the 37 that ABET accreditsâ€"and thus subject to its ethics requirement. Applicants should also ask admissions officers if their schools have stand-alone ethics courses, or if ethics is infused throughout the curriculum, he adds. 

Even though he's noticed more and more integration of ethics principles into his engineering classes at the Colorado School of Mines, Josh Bush, who earned an M.S. from Mines in mechanical engineering in 2012, says the ABET-accredited Mines still has a long way to go. 

"I think, in general, education incorporating ethics is still limited mostly to peripheral discussion seminars," he says. "Primary coursework is almost exclusively technical."