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Cultivating the Ethical Identities of STEM Students Through Enhanced Internships

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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: Ethics Education Assessment

Page Count

10

DOI

10.18260/1-2--40848

Permanent URL

https://strategy.asee.org/40848

Download Count

343

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Paper Authors

biography

Kingsley Reeves University of South Florida

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Kingsley Reeves is an Associate Professor at the University of South Florida in the Industrial and Management Systems Engineering Department. His current research interests focus on the lean six sigma philosophy and applications of traditional industrial engineering methods to solve problems in the education service sector. He is also active in engineering education research with a focus on the formation of ethical engineers. Kingsley is also a current RIEF mentee.

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Michelle Hughes Miller University of South Florida

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Grisselle Centeno Florida Polytechnic University

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Elaine Englehardt Utah Valley University

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Michael Pritchard

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Susan LeFrancois Florida Polytechnic University

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Ideliz Roman University of South Florida

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Abstract

For this NSF funded project, we investigate the integrated roles of academia and industry as formative elements of a student’s professional STEM identity. Our novel pedagogical approach aims to improve STEM students’ ethical sensitivity and reasoning skills by integrating student experiences in industry internships with their academic work. This project proposes to address the following pair of research questions: (1) To what extent do students' pre-existing attitudes, values, and goals related to ethics and perceptions of the ethical responsibility of STEM professionals change with involvement in professional ethics training? (2) How might instruction in professional ethics, coupled with a co-curricular internship experience, enhance development of the ethical component of a student's professional STEM identity? In this paper, we present some of the challenges encountered during our pilot delivery and what we have learned in spite of the challenges that we will carry into the second iteration of our intervention.

Reeves, K., & Hughes Miller, M., & Centeno, G., & Englehardt, E., & Pritchard, M., & LeFrancois, S., & Roman, I. (2022, August), Cultivating the Ethical Identities of STEM Students Through Enhanced Internships Paper presented at 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Minneapolis, MN. 10.18260/1-2--40848

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