Engineering towards a More Just and Sustainable World
Association for Practical and Professional Ethics Mini-Conference:
March 6-7, 2010, Cincinnati, Ohio
Engineers and engineering shape our social, physical, and built environments in profound ways. As that influence grows, deliberation and debate about underlying choices and directions becomes ever more important. To aid these critical reflections, the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics (APPE) is hosting this mini-conference in conjunction with its 2010 annual meeting at the Hilton Cincinnati Netherland Plaza Hotel. Cosponsored by the Center for Engineering, Ethics, and Society of the National Academy of Engineering, the meeting will bring together engineers and scholars in ethics and in science and technology studies to explore the connections between engineering and justice.
At 4:00pm on March 6, Indira Nair, Vice Provost of Education and Professor of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University, will give the keynote address, “Technology and Global Justice.” The talk will focus on how to educate the engineers of tomorrow to think about global justice in the context of their profession and work. Responding to her remarks are Greg Allgood, Director, Children’s Safe Drinking Water, and Senior Fellow in Sustainability at Proctor and Gamble, Inc.; and David Crocker, Senior Research Scholar, Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy, School of Public Policy, University of Maryland-College Park. Two panel sessions that follow on Saturday evening and Sunday morning will examine both difficulties and opportunities for connecting engineering and social and environmental justice, from the perspectives of engineers and scholars in the social sciences and humanities. The final panel of engineers will discuss resources available to engineers and organizations that wish to encourage engineering for justice. The conference will conclude Sunday at 12:30pm.
Sponsored by APPE and the National Academy of Engineering’s Center for Engineering, Ethics and Society, the kickoff keynote lecture will be free to all attendees of the APPE Annual Meeting, but registration is required to attend subsequent sessions. Registration costs $70, or $40 for those already registered for the APPE meeting. Registration materials are available on the APPE website.
You can download the preliminary agenda here.
For more information contact:
Rachelle Hollander
Director, CEES
National Academy of Engineering
Washington, DC 20001
rhollander@nae.edu
A workshop to be held as part of the AAAS annual meeting will educate AAAS members on new NSF ethics requirements introduced in the America COMPETES Act of 2007. Find out more here.
With assistance from its Advisory Group, CEES is developing educational, fellowship, and research programs. CEES sponsored two workshops in 2008.
Ethics Education and Science and Engineering Research: What’s Been Learned? What Should Be Done? took place at The National Academies Keck Building in Washington DC, on August 25-26. CEES has also organized a symposium about the workshop for the annual meeting of the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics Annual Meeting in March 2009.
NEW- Report available for free here.
Engineering, Social Justice, and Sustainable Community Development took place on October 2-3, 2008 and was co-sponsored by the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics. This is the first workshop in a CEES series on "Engineering Ethics and Engineering Leadership" which has the goal of stimulating broad trans-disciplinary conversation and new research and educational efforts on topics of concern to engineers and their organizations.
Frontiers of Engineering Survey
The Center for Engineering, Ethics, and Society within the NAE has a longstanding interest in gaining an understanding of ethical challenges facing engineers early in their careers. To that end, alumni of the FOE program received a survey by email in the summer of 2008. While the responses received from respondents were illuminating, the CEES seeks to collect additional feedback regarding concerns you may have encountered in your career. Based on your experience, are there any issues that ought to receive more attention and, if so, for what reasons? Read more information on the survey here or contact the CEES director Rachelle Hollander, Ph.D. at: rhollander@nae.edu.
CEES also plans to develop and host NAE Fellowships in Engineering, Ethics, and Society. Engineers who have projects in mind or under development that examine issues in this nexus should contact the CEES director, Rachelle Hollander. She is best reached by e-mail at rhollander@nae.edu.
Reports and associated materials will be posted to the site as they become available.