Subject: Ethics Education
Venue: Workshop on Ethics Education and Scientific and Engineering Research
Date of speech: August 25, 2008
Presenation Excerpt
Responsible Conduction of Engineering (RCE)
Responsible conduct of research (RCR) classes, web tutorials, conferences, and seminars are becoming common across universities in the United States. Materials for these programs are focused predominately on graduate students and post-doctoral trainees with typically limited involvement of research faculty. For undergraduate engineering students, ABET accreditation requirements mandate material on engineering ethics be presented. These presentations to undergraduates range from classes in ethics given by the Philosophy department to “Engineering across the curriculum” programs embedding ethics exercises into traditional engineering courses. These two levels presentations of responsible conduct are quite different with RCR courses focused almost exclusively on hypothesis-driven, experimental research and undergraduate engineering ethics courses focused on professional practice and engineering design with little or no coverage of experimental research.