ENHANCING ENGINEERING RESPONSIBILITY WITH HUMANITARIAN ETHICS: Theory and Practice of Humanitarian Ethics in Graduate Engineering Education

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This Ethics Education In Science and Engineering award to The Colorado School of Mines supports a team of five faculty led by Dr. Juan Lucena, Department of Liberal Arts and International Studies to conduct research on the application of humanitarian ethics(HE) to engineering, and to create a model of HE for engineering in graduate education.Engineering ethics education and research, with focus mainly on individual and social responsibilities,can be substantially enhanced by the analysis of an important dimension of engineering practice: the roleof engineers in humanitarian activities. Further, reform initiatives in science and engineering (S&E)graduate education have not yet realized their potential for integrating ethics into graduate curricula.Contributing to these conceptual, methodological, and curricular challenges, the proposed project has thefollowing objectives: 1) to review and critically assess relations between humanitarianism andengineering in order to develop an applicable concept of HE in engineeringeducation and practice; 2) to discover and overcome barriers to the integration of HE in graduateengineering education as currently taught and learned; 3) to create and implement a model of HE ingraduate engineering education; and 4) to assess and improve the model of HE in order to make it anexample for broad dissemination. The benefits to society from the proposed project include opening alternative career paths tograduate engineering students in the areas humanitarian intervention and community development andproviding an ethical framework for humanitarian practice to an increasing number of engineers involvedin humanitarian activities.The proposal for this award was received in response to the Ethics Education in Science and Engineering announcement, NSF 05-532, and was funded by the Division of Engineering Education and Centers (EEC) in the Directorate for Engineering, Division of Computer and Network Systems in the Computer & Information Science & Engineering Directorate, and by the Social, Behavioral & Economic Sciences Directorate.