Is engineering ethics optional?

As engineering work becomes more complex, an understanding of engineering ethics becomes as important to the proper education of engineers as their knowledge of differential equations. In the engineering world of the future, a sound understanding of the theoretical and practical sides of engineering ethics will be as necessary to the proper education of engineers as a knowledge of differential equations is today, if not more so. The author supports this assertion with three arguments: 1) engineering ethics is now a mature, practical academic discipline whose practitioners deal primarily with real engineering cases, not just abstract philosophical theories; 2) engineering work is now more complex than ever, and its ethical, social, and cultural effects can no longer be dealt with on the "seat-of-the-pants" basis that sufficed when engineered systems were simpler; 3) while most engineering students come to college with a working understanding of general ethical principles already, they need classroom practice to understand and deal with the complex and subtle issues of professional responsibility in engineering before they encounter ethical problems in the real engineering world     

电气工程师的知识能力要求

高等工程教育应以实际工程为背景,以工程技术为主线,着力提高学生的工程意识、工程素质和工程实践能力,培养造就一大批创新能力强、适应企业发展需要的优秀工程师.文中结合电气工程及其自动化专业“卓越工程师教育培养计划”,提出了本科层次电气工程师的培养标准,阐述了电气工程师知识及其应用能力、工程实践能力、交流与沟通能力、个人职业...     

Ethics, engineering, and sustainable development

The author attempts to provide the rationale for a philosophy of engineering ethics grounded in the notion of sustainable development. It is central to his thesis that this new philosophy can be best inculcated into the culture of engineering through engineering education-experience and intuition are not enough. Engineering ethicists must work more closely with engineering scientists to ensure that all facets of sustainable technology become a practical reality. While professors of engineering science can increase awareness by stimulating engineering students to build sustainable ideas into their designs, professors of engineering ethics might work to complement this by helping to transform the attitudes, values, and philosophies of the new engineer. If the engineering profession can accomplish this grand challenge through engineering ethics education, and train future engineers to become leaders in business and social policy, as well as counselors to corporate executives and citizens alike, they can finally fulfill their professional ideal as benefactor of humankind, and no longer be cast as obedient servants to corporatism.     

Ethical considerations in engineering design processes

Engineering ethics involves a broad range of (ethical) issues. In this article, we focus on the specific area of engineering ethics pertaining to engineering design. We believe that engineering design constitutes an interesting starting point for ethical issues in engineering, both for educational and research purposes. So far, there has not been much systematic research on ethical aspects in engineering design and on how engineers deal with such aspects. Engineering design is also an interesting topic to research from the point of view of engineering ethics because design is one of the main activities in which engineers are involved. Moreover, technology has social and ethical implications, mainly because of the kinds of products produced, which are the eventual outcomes of design processes. We focus on two ethical aspects of design processes: the formulation of design requirements and criteria, and the acceptance of tradeoffs between different design criteria. When calling an aspect of the design process “ethical”, we have used the following criteria: the aspect of the design process is connected to, or brings about possible negative consequences, for people other than the designers involved; more or less generally accepted values or norms are at stake; and the norms and values of the different engineers involved in the design clash with each other     

Biomedical engineering: the career of choice

In the author's opinion, the biomedical engineer is ideally trained to work at the intersection of science, medicine, and mathematics to solve biological and medical problems, so that a university degree in biomedical engineering will prepare you for many professions. The following questions are explored: What do biomedical engineers do? How do biomedical engineers differ from other engineers? How much education does a biomedical engineer require? How can a high school education prepare me for studies in biomedical engineering? What types of university courses will prepare me to be a biomedical engineer? What kind of practical experience can I expect to gain while training? Where do I get more information?.     

The Public Health, Safety and Welfare: An Analysis of the Social Responsibilities of Engineers

What obligations does an engineer have to protect the public interest in the creation and use of new technologies? How can the engineer best act so as to fulfill his or her responsibilities to the public? This paper considers these questions from the point of view of social ethics, by means of case studies of engineers in the nuclear power industry. An ethical framework is presented that allows us to define the social responsibilities of engineers. The modes of action generally available to engineers for fulfilling those responsibilities are then analyzed. All of these are judged to be inadequate, leading to the conclusion that unless the decision-making structures for the use of technology are changed, engineers will continue to be frustrated in their ability to ensure the responsible use of technology.     

Ethics for engineers falls in an unstructured gray zone

As engineering is a profession, engineers must consider the impact of ethics in their behavior. The design and application of technology include the responsibility to provide quality products and services. Professional engineering includes the responsibility of creating a positive impact on society and the quality of life. The trust places a greater responsibility on the engineering profession to assure personal safety and national security. This underscores the need for engineers to understand ethical behavior and to establish ethical conduct as a foundation of their career. In fact, engineering ethics is as important to good engineering practices as mathematics, physics, design skills, and other engineering fundamentals. Thus many Professional engineering organizations such as the IEEE have developed codes of ethics as a guide for their members.     

Motivating Engineering Freshmen through an Authentic Design Experience

As an integral part of the required course "Introduction to Engineering," every freshman engineer at Arizona State University is involved in a realistic design project. The object is to give the student a clear idea of the role of the engineer, the challenges he faces, and the skills he must acquire. In this project, each student works as a member of an "engineering firm" which develops a new design that is based on one of a number of ideas originally generated by the students themselves. This paper describes how this design competition is organized. This design experience, running through the entire semester, is paralleled by weekly lectures by prominent engineers from industry, as well as by formal conventional instruction in the elements of engineering analysis and computation.     

The Role of Baccalaureate Programs in Engineering Technology

Four year baccalaureate degree programs in engineering technology have emerged since the mid 1960's. Graduates were expected to occupy positions between the craftsman and engineer and be called "technologist." By the early 1970's it became clear that many employers were ignoring such definitions. Many graduates became registered as professional engineers and most acquired positions with the title "engineer." Unlike the two year associate degree programs, considerable confusion has developed in industry and among educators concerning the role to be played by the four year programs and their graduates. Much of the confusion results from an idealistic view of the working world that does not recognize the realities of engineering practice. A survey is described in which engineering graduates were questioned about their engineering employment and their need for certain subject matter contained in the technical curricula. Mathematics was used as a principal indicator since it is a characteristic prominent in distinguishing the engineering programs from those in engineering technology. Results of the survey strongly suggest that the mathematics emphasis characterizing engineering technology could have been appropriate for a majority of graduates in their engineering positions. Discussion concludes that it is probable that a majority of engineers in industrial assignments may be performing as defined for "technologists." It is proposed that it is realistic to redefine the baccalaureate engineering technology degree as a legitimate alternate route to positions with the title "engineer."     

Engineering ethics education on the basis of continuous education to improve communication ability

This paper proposes an engineering ethics education method for students on the basis of continuous education to improve communication ability. First, through the process of debate, the students acquire the fundamental skills necessary to marshal their arguments, to construct rebuttals, and to summarize debates. Second, the students study the fundamental techniques to make a presentation on technical subjects related to electrical engineering. Following these classes, in lectures on engineering ethics, the students probe the causes of various accidents and consider better approaches for avoiding such accidents with each other. In most cases, the students can express good and commonsensical opinions from an ethical standpoint. However, they can hardly make judgments when the situations, such as the human relations in the above accidents, are set up in concrete terms. During the engineering ethics class, the students come to know that the human relations behind the case make ethical matters more complicated. Furthermore, they come to understand that facilitating daily communications with co‐workers and/or supervisors is very important in order to avoid such accidents. The recognition of the students is primarily the result of the continuous education during 3 years. It can be said that the engineering ethics education thus constructed increases in the students this kind of spontaneous awareness as well as their ethical qualities as engineers. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electr Eng Jpn, 183(3): 1–8, 2013; Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI 10.1002/eej.22283     

The designer of industrial and commercial power systems and codeinterpretations

From the viewpoint of the electrical engineer and designer of industrial and commercial power systems, the relationship between design practice and the National Electrical Code and the possible consequences of failure to design a system that does not meet requirements of the inspection authority are discussed. The problems of interpretations by the inspection authority or designer that are not in the realm of mainstream practice are addressed. Recommendations are made for handling code violations which may be charged to design staff. Some suggestions are made on how the IEEE Industry Applications Society might assist design engineers in working with the Code     

Conducting online course dialogue on the ethics of weapons design

ABET Engineering Criteria (EC) 2000 specify that engineering colleges and universities must ensure that all students understand their professional and ethical responsibilities upon graduation. While there are many ways that engineering educators and institutions can address this requirement, recently a one credit online engineering class was developed for the Virginia Tech Engineering Education department and piloted in 2001 and 2002. There were many lessons learned both in the development of the ethics and weapons lecture as well as the in the delivery of a course through a Web-based medium. Web-based course delivery technology, while making great improvements over the past few years, can add a layer of complexity for both students and instructors. Specific to the actual ethics and weapons development lecture, because of historical events and a changing global climate, a lecture on engineers and design of weapons need to include a discussion of ethical implications of terrorism as they relate to just war criteria and changes in technology. Lastly, a difficult but important area for future exploration would be the determination of how these engineering ethics modules come into conflict with other values implicitly or explicitly taught in other engineering courses.     

Engineering ethics cases for electrical and computer engineeringstudents

Rarely is electrical technology at the focus of the classic case studies used in engineering ethics courses and textbooks. This makes it sometimes difficult to excite and to motivate electrical and computer engineering students to study and discuss these cases. In teaching engineering ethics to these students, it can be valuable to employ case studies that involve technical issues that electrical and computer engineers have already studied in other courses. In this paper, four engineering ethics case studies covering topics that have been shown to interest electrical and computer engineering students are presented     

Agile software development: human values and culture

Software engineers need to know how to evaluate different methods of developing software. A group of new development methods have emerged under the general label "agile development." These techniques are sometimes called "light weight" as opposed to "heavy weight" techniques such as those based on the waterfall model. Two classic ethical techniques - utilitarian and deontological analyses - can offer insights into the arguments surrounding, agile methods. These and other applied ethics techniques offer software engineers a more precise language for articulating their ideas about software engineering issues that involve human values.     

An intelligent balance

This paper discusses the intelligent balance, which has been established between real and virtual experiments and it also gives skills that have not covered in conventional electronics and communication engineering. Engineering is the art of applying scientific and mathematical principles, experience, judgment and common sense to make things that benefit people. The explosive growth of computer capabilities and easy access to nanominiature devices has revolutionized communication and the analysis of complex systems. The EC engineer either individually or as a member of a team, can play an important role in this technical diverse mosaic and this community prepares to adapt frequency shifts in technical priorities. EC engineers should be given computers hand-on-practice and training and also should understand the physics of the problem and fundamental theorem.     

Education for sustainability: a report card on engineering

The results of a study undertaken to determine how much engineering students learn about the way technology influences human life, society, and nature and to what extent the knowledge is used to adjust engineering methods and approaches to achieve a greater compatibility with these contexts are presented. The results suggest that the next generation of engineers is not in a good position to make a significant contribution to the development of a more sustainable way of life by substantially reducing negative impacts. The implementation of a technology policy and research strategy designed to explore the possibilities of preventive engineering that could lead to healthier social and natural ecologies, a stronger economy, more jobs, and a more sustainable way of life is discussed, and examples of such implementations are presented     

Some legal aspects of engineering

Several legal areas of interest to the practicing engineer are discussed. They are: intellectual property (ideas, copyrights, patents); working papers (confidentiality, employees' right to copies); working conditions (environment, relations with others, compensation); government regulations (rules defining a qualified engineer); ethics (moral judgments resulting in legal consequences); and forensic engineering (responsibility for design decisions, depositions)     

One company's guideline for hazardous area classification

Historically, hazardous area classification has been the responsibility of the plant electrical engineer. In reality, however, many projects were being designed with minimum input from the plant engineering. Most consulting firms would use an ultra-conservative approach with little input from process engineers and no consideration for potential cost savings. The existing national standards and guidelines are written to provide safety and flexibility of design and are difficult for the inexperienced engineer to interpret. Even for experienced engineers, this flexibility often leads to different interpretations for similar situations. In 1993, a small group of electrical engineers recognized a need for standardization without compromising safety, and formed a technical committee to address this issue. This paper presents the result of the committee's work as a corporate engineering technical guideline