The Phoenix?A Challenge to Engineering Education*

Engineering education is presented with a unique opportunity for improvement due to the interruption caused by the war. This improvement can only be obtained by a clear determination of the fundamental goals of engineering education and the application to its curricula of the engineering design processes it claims to teach. A distinction should be drawn between the problems of Science, which are those of analysis, and the problems of engineering which are those of Synthesis. Engineering and nonengineering students both should be taught what engineering really is, its philosophy and what it can do. The importance of its humanistic aspect should be stressed. A program is proposed for participation in the discussion and design of engineering curricula by the Institute sections.     

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.     

Engineering Design and Social Value

Because of the exponential growth of science and technology, the engineering student cannot hope to take more than a small sub-set of the many engineering courses available to him. The question often arises about the degree to which engineering students should find room in their cramped study schedule for work in the humanities, the social sciences, and other nonengineering topics. The engineer is faced with making value decisions in the realistic practice of his profession. In this paper, it is shown that making value decisions is inherent in the design process itself. It is also shown that the engineer's position in modem society is often at the right hand of major decision makers. Since many engineers are in a position where they cannot avoid sharing responsibility for decisions affecting social, political, and economic change, serious training in these areas appears desirable.     

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     

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     

Using history and sociology to teach engineering ethics

An overview is given of the academic discipline of engineering ethics in the United States, describing how the subject has been taught in the US, and suggesting a new method that uses the history and sociology of science and technology to teach ethical issues in engineering. Traditionally, engineering ethicists have focussed on accidents to analyze both ethical conduct and social implications of engineering. The new approach attempts to move beyond this concern with what might be called "disaster ethics" to study the ethical and social aspects of everyday engineering practice     

Biomedical Engineering Course Development for Health Care Delivery

A new program of courses in biomedical engineering has been initiated at Michigan Technological University, both at the graduate and undergraduate level. The rationale for the development of these courses stems from the rapid growth in technology which has permeated almost all areas of health care delivery. The major goals of each course are described in terms of 1) establishing a required level of technical competence and literacy in the field, 2) developing those communication skills that will typically be required of the students after graduation, and 3) developing a sense of challenge which will last the students beyond their formative years. The philosophy underlying the choice of topical content, course organization, and student evaluation are all considered within the broader framework of establishing a modern foundation which the student, as well as the industrial and clinical community, can readily appreciate and identify with.     

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     

浅谈伊朗阿拉克电厂工程的管理

伊朗阿拉克电厂工程管理的经验 ,主要包括设置精干的现场指挥部、搞好现场的技术服务和监理、计划与协调、索赔与反索赔、施工质量控制与管理、文件图纸资料的管理、仓储管理以及后勤服务等。这些经验说明总结出一套既适合我国国情又能与国际惯例接轨的国外工程管理模式的重要性     

Rethinking the Introduction to an Engineering Course

The student consumerism movement along with rapidly changing professional demands and opportunities are forces which will require engineering departments or colleges to inform new students more fully of their educational programs and career opportunities. The introductory engineering course is a natural place to provide such a service and yet if the current literature on engineering education and college catalogs is any gauge, this course is under-utilized and ineffectively organized. This paper discusses ECE 0100, an Introduction to Electrical and Computer Engineering, which is currently being offered at Wayne State University. This course incorporates the educational philosophy and assumptions advocated by humanistic psychology and shows that such an approach naturally satisfies the information requirements created by student consumerism and changing professionsal needs.     

Social informatics and service learning as teaching models

We have proposed a framework to integrate social and ethical issues into science and engineering curricula. We have also shown how such a framework might be implemented across a curriculum, and how it might be applied to the study of a specific scientific problem. Our framework is based on basic foundations of applied engineering ethics, adaptation of the structure of the meta-discipline of social informatics, and the use of a service-learning pedagogy based on Perry's (1981) cognitive-structural model for intellectual development in college students. The structure of the taxonomy of social informatics research and issues offer a well-established framework that can be re-contextualized for many science and engineering fields. Service learning offers a clear model for giving students the opportunity to practice ethical and social concepts imparted to them in the classroom.     

Engineering the Future: Embedding Engineering Permanently Across the School–University Interface

This paper describes the design, implementation, and evaluation of an educational program. Engineering the Future (EtF) sought to promote a permanent, informed awareness within the school community of high-level engineering by embedding key aspects of engineering within the education curriculum. The Scottish education system is used for a case study in which a range of pilot high schools worked in close partnership with two university engineering departments. The study focuses on electronic/electrical engineering (EEE), a technically challenging area, which reflects many of the problems that are intrinsic to modern society. In so doing, the work also sought to support and refine the transition from the school environment to higher education engineering courses. EtF is founded on research into transformational change and describes the findings of a three-year program that sought to develop sustainable and transferable means of encouraging school students to study engineering at university. The authors describe the conditions needed to support sustainable developments. They also provide an analysis of inevitable constraints and suggest strategies to address these issues. The paper concludes that sustainable long-term promotion of engineering within schools to support the transition to university is possible if certain conditions are fulfilled. These conditions include the use of a model that facilitates partnerships among researchers, policy-makers, and practitioners in all sectors. Building such essential linkages is often challenging, but this effort is necessary if changes in engineering education are to be realized and sustained.      

Balancing autonomy and benefit in research ethics

Laws requiring motorcycle riders to wear helmets save lives and prevent nasty brain injuries. However, a substantial number of riders resent this parentalism and want to be free to decide whether to ride without a helmet and take the additional risk. After all, motorcycle riders have already chosen a more risky form of transportation. The debate is a conflict about which of two legitimate values should prevail: benefits to riders or freedom to choose. It is a debate that occurs whenever government restricts liberty in the name of social benefit. One of the places this debate takes place is in medical research. Our discussions about the ethics of research take place in the shadow of the Nazi medical atrocities in World War II. In this essay I explore the issue of clinical trials on human volunteers for whom there will be no anticipated benefit. The topic reveals how difficult it is to reconcile autonomy and protection of human volunteers.     

The Education and Professional Development of Engineering Faculties

The goal of engineering education is to train students to enter the practice of engineering. To accomplish this, there must be a faculty which is itself well-educated and adept at the practice of engineering, as well as a sympathetic environment, adequately equipped with appropriate facilities. Today's rapid technological progress renders earlier developments obsolete. The engineer, therefore, must be alert to adapt to his purposes the latest and most powerful advances of scientific knowledge. The failure of the faculty to keep up this pace has resulted in an inability to cope with the implication of scientific advances and a lack of communication between the educator and his counterpart in industry and development laboratories. By default, the scientist has had to step in to assume engineering responsibilities; thus the training of our engineers all too often has become a function of industry and development centers. If industry and science continue to take over this responsibility, we need a searching examination to determine the cause of our inadequacy. Our faculties and institutions must maintain an adequate and identifiable program of engineering education, or our role will become precarious and ambiguous. At the heart of the problem are the opportunities, or lack of them, provided for engineering faculties to continue their educational and professional development. A total program of faculty education and professional development will include: 1) research and development investigations, 2) consulting, 3) internal educational activities, and 4) external educational activities.     

Engineering licenses are not for everyone

A license to practice engineering is a privilege granted by a state to call oneself an “engineer” and to practice “engineering” before the public. In most states, these are protected terms having very specific meaning to the public. To become licensed as an “engineer”, an individual has to be willing to meet a minimum standard of education, experience, and examination to demonstrate their technical competence and their concern for the welfare of the public. The educational requirement is provided by an institution offering an engineering program that has been reviewed and accredited by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET). The degree awarded by such an institution allows one to claim that one is a graduate of an accredited engineering program but not that one is an engineer. The experience requirement is satisfied by engaging in the “practice of engineering” as defined in the empowering statutes of each state engineering licensing board. The examination requirement is met by passing two eight-hour national examinations prepared by the National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying (NCEES), which are offered twice each year. The philosophy and content of the national examinations is the subject of this article     

Applying an interdisciplinary approach to teaching computer ethics

The question of who should teach courses on ethical aspects of technology continues to be debated in the computer ethics literature. A central question is whether such courses should be taught by philosophy faculty or by computer science/engineering faculty. This analysis focuses on computer ethics instruction within the undergraduate computer science curriculum.     

Ethical risk assessment: valuing public perceptions

Engineers are confronted with an array of moral issues and dilemmas as the complexity modern technology results in equally complex efforts to assess the accompanying environmental and safety risks. The author examines the connections between engineering ethics, risk communication, and the engineering culture. First moral issues in risk assessment are reviewed and the ethical responsibilities of engineers with respect to risk assessment and risk communication are discussed. The conventional model of risk communication, which holds that only experts possess relevant risk information, is then critiqued, and the findings of social scientists and humanists with respect to the dual importance of expert and public risk information are reviewed. Following a discussion of the prevailing engineering culture, particularly as it relates to the problems involved in risk communication, some suggestions are made for transforming the engineering culture in a manner conducive to more meaningful discussion of risk     

Experience Management Wikis for Reflective Practice in Software Capstone Projects

Software engineering curriculum guidelines state that students should practice methods, techniques, and tools. A capstone project is one possibility to address this aim. A capstone project helps the students to increase their problem solving competencies, improve their social skills (e.g., communication skills), and gather practical experience. A crux of such projects is that students perform ldquoreflectiverdquo practice in order to learn from their experiences. The authors believe that experience gathering and reuse are effective techniques to stimulate reflective activities. An adapted free- and open-source Wiki-based system called software organization platform (SOP) is used to support students in managing their observations and experiences. The system can be used for experience exchange within the team and for experience reuse in forthcoming projects. The results of a case study show that standard Wiki functions improve communication and information sharing by means of explicit observation and experience documentation. A total of 183 documented observations and experiences at the end of the project provide a measure for the amount of reflection students have had during the capstone project. Still, the advantages of using Wikis will decrease when no technical adaptations of the Wiki to the learning objectives and to the software engineering tasks are made. Limitations of the case study, future evaluation steps, and planned developments of SOP will be provided in this paper.     

The Role of Systems Engineering in Electrical Engineering Education

Systems Engineering, including its subspecialties, has much to offer and is a needed component in electrical engineering education. Inclusion of efforts in systems engineering philosophy and methodology within the electrical engineering curriculum can do much towards the enhancement of student achievement of technical and management proficiency and, perhaps more importantly, towards achievement of appreciation of the vital role of the human element in resolution of large scale problems through technology. A framework for an introductory systems engineering course is described.     

Making connections: engineering ethics on the World Wide Web

This paper focuses on the use of the World Wide Web in courses and course units dealing with engineering ethics and/or the social implications of engineering. Course materials and other resources for use by students and faculty are discussed and a new website, the Web Clearinghouse for Engineering and Computing Ethics, is introduced. Course materials and resources found on the Web include: ethics centers that focus on engineering ethics and/or other fields of professional ethics; case studies and other instructional materials; course syllabi; codes of engineering ethics; ethics pages of professional societies; papers, articles and reports with relevance to engineering and computer ethics; on-line ethics journals and newsletters; and primary source archives. The Web lends itself for use as a place to post a “living” course syllabus, with hypertext links to on- and off-site material containing course information and assignments as well as information on content and pedagogical techniques of interest to faculty who are developing and teaching courses in engineering and computing ethics. By illustrating in real-time the interconnectedness of information from engineering, the humanities and the social sciences, the Web serves as a tangible metaphor for the interdisciplinary approach necessary for a complete examination of ethics in engineering