Developing Case Studies in Failures and Ethics for Engineering Educators

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Engineering - Civil (54)We have identified a need for failure awareness in the undergraduate engineering curriculum. Engineers can learn a lot from failures, and failures play an essential role in engineering design. This need has been documented in a number of papers and conferences over the past 15 years. Our work is in response to this situation and aimed at providing a heightened appreciation of the role failure analysis knowledge can play in higher education and public safety.We have produced educational materials on failure case studies for use in civil engineering and engineering mechanics courses, in print and CD-ROM format. In addition we have developed a one-day workshop to disseminate these materials to 24 engineering faculty members from across the U.S. During the course of our project we have developed our educational materials, including review and feedback by the committees discussed below, and the workshop, as well as a thorough evaluation of both efforts. Although the majority of the work has been carried out at The University of Alabama at Birmingham, faculty members and practicing engineers from across the country have participate in the development of these materials and the workshop. This work has been accomplished through the various committees of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Technical Council on Forensic Engineering (TCFE). Our work has specifically targets the NSF Division of Undergraduate Education crosscutting theme of Faculty Development.