Research: Supporting Ethical Engineering: The role of immersive engineering subcommunities

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The National Academy of Engineering emphasizes the importance of ethics in engineering and therefore in engineering education, going so far as to produce a book, "Practical Guidance on Science and Engineering Ethics Education for Instructors and Administrators." In most universities, however, current engineering ethics education suffers from two problems. First, stand-alone ethics courses have not shown success at helping students develop new "habits of mind" that help them bring ethical considerations into their day-to-day engineering work. Second, most engineering ethics education focuses on certain kinds of ethical issues, like responsible conduct of research and responsibility to employers and clients. Those are important, of course; but equally important, though underemphasized in engineering ethics courses, are issues related to the broader societal impact of engineering products. Because technologies- from everyday tools such as cell phones to emergent technologies such as autonomous cars- are shaped by society while also shaping society, engineers working in the public and private sector have a responsibility to a broader set of stakeholders than just employers and clients. Therefore, socially responsible engineers must consider not only the direct, intended, short-term effects of a technology, but also the potential longer-term, indirect, unintended consequences: the social, cultural, political, economic, and environmental impacts of these technologies on users and broader society. Doing so requires not only good intentions but also some knowledge and skills connected to understanding how engineering is embedded in society, how societal and technological developments mutually influence each other. This understanding, and the desire to use it, can lead to better engineering- engineering that takes various end-users and stakeholders into account. But a single engineering ethics course or service learning project is unlikely to fully develop the knowledge, skills, and "habits of mind" needed to engage in high-quality, socially responsible engineering. This project therefore explores a promising other approach to producing socially responsible engineers: immersing students for multiple years in community whose members live together in the same dorm, engage in projects together, and take courses together about ethics and about the relationships between technology, science/engineering, society, and ethics. The University of Maryland's College Park Scholars Science Technology and Society Living Learning program is one of the most established of such programs for engineering undergraduates in the country. Through an ethnographic approach to modeling how participation in this Science Technology & Society program influences learners' identity and behavior, this project studies an "enculturation" approach to engineering ethics education through long-term immersion programs. The project integrates "outsider" (researchers') and "insider" (participating students') observations of and reflections on culturally salient events, activities, and artifacts to create ethnographic descriptions of which cultural practices (embedded in institutional history/values reflected in and produced by social interactions) are consequential for shaping engineering students' ethical reasoning and identity. Following a cohort of students over 2 years enables the team to develop accounts of how individuals do - and do not - take up cultural practices while in the Science, Technology, and Society program. Project findings will inform the creation and refinement of Science, Technology, and Society programs and other engineering communities that take an immersive cultural approach to the formation of engineers with the knowledge, tools, and motivation to attend to ethical issues in engineering practice. The graduates of such programs will contribute to creating ethical cultures in their workplaces, leading to more ethical engineering practice. Women and students from underrepresented minority groups are disproportionately likely to feel marginalized by an engineering culture that excludes or minimizes the value of socially-embedded engineering, therefore, the project intends to improve the ability of engineering communities to support their students' ethical development and provide hospitable environments for marginalized students.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.