Integrating Ethics into a First Year Introduction to Engineering Course

Gayle Ermer
Calvin College

Course Description

ENGR 101 -Introduction to Engineering Design is typically the first course taken by engineering students in the fall of their first year. Enrollment in fall of 2002 was - 115 students divided into 5 sections. The course is taught by a rotating roster of three or four faculty members each year. The lead instructor typically organizes a curriculum that is followed by all the sections. This year I served as the lead instructor. The syllabus and a detailed course calendar are included in the Appendix of this report.

Ethics Content

In previous years we have devoted two or three lectures to ethics-related topics. Those usually consisted of case study discussions of the Challenger disaster and an antenna tower collapse. Students tended to see these issues as unrelated to the rest of the material in the course.

This year I made a conscious attempt to add more ethics content and to integrate that content with our goal of exposing students to engineering as a profession. The particular experiences that resulted are summarized here (some detailed lecture notes are included in the Appendix).

Oct. 23 Professionalism and Codes of Ethics
•Students were presented with the "Catalyst B: Phase I" case study
•After some discussion they were presented with the NSPE Code of Ethics
•They were also given the Seven Step Guide Several responses to the case study were generated and the discussion ended with a vote on the best response

Oct. 28 Values/Design Norms
•Christian norms for design were presented-the ethical nature of these norms was emphasized

Dec. 2 and 4
•Christian perspectives on using computers were discussed-this was not a discussion of engineering or business ethics per se, but ties between personal morality and behavior were emphasized

Dec. 9
•A guest lecturer (Kent Druyvesteyn, a former VP of ethics at General Dynamics) talked with students about his experiences with business ethics

Dec. 11
•The "Testing Water" video was shown as a case study Students were asked to answer the questions on the study sheet and hand in their responses, which were graded with a check or checkminus.
• As part of the second project for the course, students were asked to justify their choice for an electrical energy generating plant on the basis of ethical as well as economic considerations.

Student Responses

The student evaluations indicated that most students found the material valuable. 0 94% said it increased their awareness 0 74% said it changed their understanding of the importance of ethics 0 73% said it increased their ability to deal with problems 0 70% said the right amount of time was spent on ethics (of the remaining 30%, twice as many indicated too much as opposed to too little time was spent) I think all of the instructors felt the material that was added was very valuable. The "Catalyst B" and "Testing Water" case studies were much more valuable to the students than other case studies I have used.