Factors Related to Faculty Views Toward Undergraduate Engineering Ethics Education

Abstract

This study focuses on faculty members' views of how engineering ethics should fit within their own most frequently taught course and in the undergraduate engineering curriculum more generally. It draws on quantitative data from a survey administered to engineering faculty at a nationally representative sample of 31 institutions (n = 1,389 usable faculty responses). This analysis seeks to uncover variables that help explain the following: 1) how much faculty emphasize ethical issues in engineering practice in their most frequently taught undergraduate engineering course, 2) how much they emphasize the effect of beliefs and values on ethical decisions, and 3) the extent to which they believe the engineering curriculum should address ethical issues in multiple courses. Predictor variables included faculty departmental affiliation, rank, gender, years teaching at the college level, years working outside of academia, weekly number of hours spent on research, and type of course primarily taught (i.e., first-year design course, required engineering course, capstone design course). Results showed differences between faculty in certain engineering disciplines; civil engineering faculty members emphasized ethical issues in their courses to the greatest extent; electrical engineering and mechanical engineering faculty members were on the opposite end of the spectrum. Additionally, an emphasis on ethical issues was placed more heavily by faculty members teaching first-year engineering design courses and capstone design courses than those teaching more traditionally technical courses (i.e. required engineering courses, fundamental math and science courses, and engineering electives). One might explain this with a sandwich theory of program course design in which the first-year and final-year design courses contain the "non-technical" material, and the intervening second and third years are reserved for technical content stripped of contextual discussions on topics like ethics.