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Ethics Education and Resources: A Summary of Issues Facing the Field and Resources to Address Them

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Conference

2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

San Antonio, Texas

Publication Date

June 10, 2012

Start Date

June 10, 2012

End Date

June 13, 2012

ISSN

2153-5965

Conference Session

Panel: A Conversation About Ethics Education and Resources

Tagged Division

Engineering Ethics

Page Count

13

Page Numbers

25.585.1 - 25.585.13

DOI

10.18260/1-2--21342

Permanent URL

https://strategy.asee.org/21342

Download Count

423

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Paper Authors

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Rebecca A. Bates Minnesota State University, Mankato

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Rebecca A. Bates received the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Washington in 2004. She also received the M.T.S. degree from Harvard Divinity School in 1993. She is currently an Associate Professor in the Computer Science Department and Integrated Engineering program at Minnesota State University, Mankato. She is a 2011-12 AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellow at the National Science Foundation.

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Taft H. Broome Jr. Howard University

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Taft H. Broome, Jr., is a professor of civil engineering at Howard University. He holds a Sc.D. degree in civil engineering and a M.S. degree in engineering ethics. He publishes regularly in engineering dynamics, engineering ethics, and philosophy of engineering literature, and has served in positions of national leadership in 12 scholarly societies, including the AAAS, Sigma Xi, AAUP, and the ASEE. He is a Fellow of the AAAS, the 2011 recipient of the ASEE Olmsted Award, a Fellow of the Rensselaer Alumni Association, a member of the editorial board of Science & Engineering Ethics, and a Founding Editorial Board Member of Engineering Studies.

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Legand L. Burge Jr. Tuskegee University

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Legand L. Burge, Jr. is Dean of the College of Engineering and professor of electrical engineering at Tuskegee University. He received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Oklahoma State University in 1972, 1973, and 1979, respectively. He has served on the faculty of George Washington University, Tuskegee, Regis College, Johns Hopkins, Bowie State University, and the U.S. Air Force Academy, and now as Dean since 1999 at Tuskegee University. In this position, he is responsible for efficient and effective operations of the college. Burge brings leadership to more than 700 students, 66 faculty, and 21 staff members, and effective and efficient management of a modest research and development program for the college. The college continues to be a top 10 producer of engineering graduates who possess the technical talent to compete in industry, government, and academia. Prior to joining Tuskegee, Burge was Dean at the Defense Systems Management College (DSMC), Vice Commander of Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps (AFROTC), member of the Defense Secretary and Air staffs, Pentagon, Division Chief, National Security Agency (NSA), and Operations Officer for Secretary of the Air Force Special Projects. The Air Force held his services for 27 years, and retired Burge as Colonel (O-6) in 1999. He has served on the advisory board for the National Science Foundation (NSF) Engineering Directorate, the Advisory Committee on Government Performance Assessment, Northwestern University McCormick School of Engineering, Advancing Minorities’ Interests In Engineering (AMIE), Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) Council of Deans of Engineering, and the National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE). He served on the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) Study on the Engineering Studies at Tribal Colleges. He is the author of numerous articles and has served as a member of the American Society of Engineering Education Engineering (ASEE) Deans’ Council (EDC) Public Policy Committee. Burge was elected to the ASEE Engineering Deans Council Executive Board. As part of the EDC, Burge chaired the EDC Committee on Diversity; served as a member of the ASEE Engineering Deans Institute (EDI) Colloquium Committee; and served as a member of the EDC K-12 Engineering Task Force. He continues to be an active transformational leader using his experience in national defense, academia, and the information technology industry to affect a dynamic program.

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Rachelle Hollander National Academy of Engineering

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Rachelle Hollander directs the National Academy of Engineering’s Center for Engineering Ethics and Society (CEES). CEES manages the NAE Online Ethics Center (http://www.onlineethics.org/). For many years, Hollander directed the science and engineering ethics activities at the National Science Foundation. In 2006, Hollander received the Olmsted Award “for innovative contributions to the liberal arts within engineering education” from the American Society of Engineering Education’s Liberal Education Division. Hollander is a Fellow of the AAAS and currently a member of the Governing Board of the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics. She has been instrumental in the development of the fields of research ethics and professional responsibility, engineering ethics, and ethics and risk management and is currently principal investigator on two NSF-funded projects.

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Michael C. Loui University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

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Michael C. Loui is a professor of electrical and computer engineering and University Distinguished Teacher-Scholar at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. His interests include computational complexity theory, professional ethics, and the scholarship of teaching and learning. He serves as Executive Editor of College Teaching, and as a member of the editorial board of Accountability in Research. He is a Carnegie Scholar and an IEEE Fellow. Loui was Associate Dean of the Graduate College at Illinois from 1996 to 2000. He directed the theory of computing program at the National Science Foundation from 1990 to 1991. He earned the Ph.D. at MIT in 1980.

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Abstract

Ethics Education & Resources: A summary of issues facing the field and resources to address themAbstractThis paper will be a supporting document for a proposed panel discussion so that resources andinformation discussed during the panel discussion can be easily found after the conference.The United States Congress has mandated that ethics education in STEM be a priority. Inaddressing this priority, there are many challenges. Undergraduate engineering programs havebegun to address this by meeting ABET accreditation expectations. Graduate students, post-docsand current faculty have not necessarily had the same experience. Broadening our understandingof the audience of learners and the potential settings for learning about ethics is a first step inreaching this priority. Next steps include the ongoing development of resources that support thislearning throughout academic and professional engineering careers and the fostering ofconversations that include the diverse perspectives and experiences of engineers, whetherstudents, faculty or professionals in the field. The goal of this paper will be to provideinformation about available resources as well as a discussion of key issues facing ethicseducation today.Key questions that will be addressed in this work (and in the panel) include:What are barriers to incorporating ethics education into engineering programs?What tools are available to address these barriers?How can we support a community of practitioners learning and teaching ethics?There is clearly a need for resources to support engineering educators who teach professionalethics. While many institutions and individual faculty have developed courses and programs, itis not yet pervasive in our community. Research has shown that incorporating educationcomponents like professional skills, writing, and ethics across the engineering curriculum makesthe most sense for learning in context. However, very few engineering faculty feel competent inteaching these important career skills, especially when there is little enough time to teach theexpected technical content. Gathering the disparate tools and resources and buildingcommunities of practice will help address this.The paper will include information about the Ethics CORE (Collaborative Online ResourceEnvironment) project, an Internet portal supporting ethics education in science, social science,engineering and math supported by the National Science Foundation. The online environmentconsists of tools like searching, developing, and contributing resources, collaborativeworkspaces, discussion areas, wikis and blogs as well as resources like a peer-reviewedinteractive encyclopedia of professional and research ethics, essays on teaching and pedagogy,videos, online courses and links to other online resources. As a living site, all members of theengineering education community are encouraged to participate, whether by contributingresources or feedback, by actively participating in collaborative groups, or by using resources toenhance their teaching.

Bates, R. A., & Broome, T. H., & Burge, L. L., & Hollander, R., & Loui, M. C. (2012, June), Ethics Education and Resources: A Summary of Issues Facing the Field and Resources to Address Them Paper presented at 2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, San Antonio, Texas. 10.18260/1-2--21342

ASEE holds the copyright on this document. It may be read by the public free of charge. Authors may archive their work on personal websites or in institutional repositories with the following citation: © 2012 American Society for Engineering Education. Other scholars may excerpt or quote from these materials with the same citation. When excerpting or quoting from Conference Proceedings, authors should, in addition to noting the ASEE copyright, list all the original authors and their institutions and name the host city of the conference. - Last updated April 1, 2015