Beside technical knowledge, a practicing engineer needs to write well, to speak well, and to exercise sound business and ethical judgment. The best way to teach an engineer these skills is, I believe, by integrating their practice into appropriate technical courses. Because I believe that, I became involved in efforts to introduce ethics across IIT's curriculum. At first, I felt less than qualified to "teach ethics," since I have no formal background in moral philosophy or professional ethics. A summer workshop for faculty, organized and conducted by Michael Davis and Vivian Weil of IIT's Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions, helped me overcome this impression and provided me with guidance and some techniques to introduce ethics into engineering courses. I suspect this was easier than the alternative: to teach a philosopher engineering! At any rate, with the workshop under my belt, I was able to integrate ethical issues into two courses that I taught during the following semester. I do this now on a regular basis.

During a discussion of related issues, Davis, Weil, and I asked ourselves if there were other ways of exposing students to ethics in a professional setting. Undergraduate participation in research seemed a promising candidate for this purpose. The Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) is a program that I direct at IIT's Fluid Dynamics Research Center. Sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the REU provides an opportunity for interested and qualified undergraduates to participate in on-going research at the Center. Each student selected for participation in the program receives a stipend and becomes a member of a research team, working under the guidance of a faculty member and graduate student. He or she is given specific assignments tailored to obtain the right mix of knowledge, skills, and accomplishment. The objectives are to provide the student with a rich learning experience, a perspective on research opportunities in engineering, and encouragement to consider graduate studies followed by a career in research and development. We decided that the REU would provide an excellent opportunity to introduce students to ethical issues in research. NSF agreed, awarding a small supplemental grant to test our ideas.

Each participant in the REU, working under the supervision of one of five faculty members at the Fluid Dynamics Research Center, followed a schedule designed to fit in with his or her other commitments. I conducted a meeting about once a month for all the participants. During these meetings, each participant made a short presentation of his or her progress in the research. These presentations familiarized each participant with the research in which the others were involved. Other topics relevant to research were also discussed.

Davis, Weil, and I decided that these meetings were a good place to introduce ethics, even though the relatively short time available (about fifteen minutes a meeting for ethics) seemed a severe constraint. We then looked for techniques to introduce ethics in a natural way.

One of the topics for discussion at these meetings was the need for record keeping in research. While there are several scientific and technical arguments in favor of organized and objective record keeping, there are sound ethical end business reasons as well. We decided discussing record keeping would provide one focal point for the integration of ethics.

The REU provided the participants with the opportunity to sharpen their oral communication skills through monthly presentations and their writing through a brief written report at the end of the program, summarizing research done and benefits received. One of the topics for discussion during our meetings was the preparation of technical reports and journal articles. Several important ethical issues could be raised easily in this context: objectivity in the reporting of research, suppression of results, assignment of proper credit to all involved, and so on.

A third area that we chose for discussion highlighted the social context of research: the interaction of people in a research group, the ways in which research is funded at universities in the US, and the implication of goals and outcomes of specific research projects for society in general.

I first tried to integrate ethics in this way at three meetings with REU participants in the spring of 1993. Apart from selecting a topic of ethics on which to focus during a meeting, I had no "game plan"-I would go with the flow of the meeting. At the first,meeting, I initiated a discussion of record keeping in research and let the students bring out the various reasons for keeping good records. Without actually using the word "ethics," I was able to introduce some of the ethical arguments. One student's description of experimental results during the second meeting included his reasons for rejecting what he considered bad data. This opened a natural avenue to discuss both scientific and ethical tests for the acceptance or rejection of data and the proper way to report results to substantiate conclusions.

I felt that the discussions had gone very well during the two meetings. The ethical and technical issues had meshed together so well that I had not stated explicitly that we had, in fact, been discussing professional ethics. This concerned me a little. Had the group realized they were doing ethics? I decided to make sure at our last meeting. I brought up the earlier discussions and asked if they had recognized that some of the issues were related to ethics. Much to my satisfaction, they had.

During this last meeting, we discussed strategies employed by researchers in the writing of proposals for funding and the ethical issues related to defining research areas and programs of work. This topic generated a lively discussion of accepted practice and "borderline ethics".

Davis or Weil attended the meetings, but generally played the role of observer. All three of us felt that the plan had worked well, that we had given participants en awareness of the importance of ethics in research and of the need to treat ethics as an important factor in all aspects of research.

Feedback from the participants completed assessment of our efforts. We had devised a questionnaire for the participants. We also monitored their final reports for any mention of ethics. Two of the eight students specifically mentioned ethics (as against none in previous years). The relevant passages from the two reports are:

"REU taught me a lot about ethics in our profession, the importance of communication, and the need for good management skills."

"Dr. Acharya...also introduced into these meetings the discussion of ethics in the professions. 1 sincerely enjoyed these parts of the discussions. I believe that ethics need to be discussed more frequently and thoroughly in any field. These discussions brought out many situations and activities that go on in the environs of research which need to be addressed from an ethics standpoint. [feel that this is an aspect of this program which needs to be rigorously continued. I also believe this to be a field that needs to be very strongly incorporated into the curriculums [sic] of any and all fields of study."

Clearly, we made a strong impression on at least two of the participants. In response to one of the items in the questionnaire, three participants stated that they would have liked to have spent more time on issues related to ethics. All participants felt the ethics was useful and worthwhile. It appears that our time was well spent. Discussion of ethical issues is now a regular feature of my REU's meetings.