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Introduction to a symposium integrating ethics into engineering and science

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Article  in  Science and Engineering Ethics · November 2005

DOI: 10.1007/s11948-005-0030-3 · Source: PubMed

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 Science and Engineering Ethics (2005) 11, 631-634

Introduction to a Symposium
Integrating Ethics into Engineering and
Science Courses
Michael Davis
Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions, Illinois Institute of Technology, USA

Keywords: ethics across the curriculum, assessment, judgment, sensitivity

In 1990, the Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions at Illinois Institute of
Technology (IIT) received a major grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF)
to try a campus-wide approach to integrating professional ethics into its technical
curriculum; in 1996, the Center received another to continue the project, with the
emphasis on passing on to other institutions what was learned at IIT; and, in 2000, the
Center received a third grant, which was to end in June 2004 but was extended one
a
more year. During those fifteen years, more than a 160 faculty “graduated” from the
workshop and another dozen or so attended as unofficial volunteers. I was the principal
investigator for all three grants and, hoping others might benefit from what my
“graduates” have been doing, convened this symposium.
Though a product of the workshop’s last class, the four papers that follow this
introduction give a fair sense of the variety of experiments the entire 160 have engaged
in. All are contributions to “ethics across the curriculum”, but in only one of the five
senses I have distinguished elsewhere.1 All integrate small amounts of professional
ethics into technical courses. They do not attempt to teach morality, moral theory, or
social ethics. They are also not examples of courses in the ethics of a profession. They
are all “micro-insertions”.b,2 Florence Appel, a computer scientist at Saint Xavier
University, describes how she systematically integrated care for privacy and security
throughout a course in database design, management, and maintenance.3 Ewa

a. Grant #EVS-9014220 ($210,000), #EHR-9601905 ($100,000), and SES-9985813 (for $244,000).

For a detailed description of the original workshop, see Michael Davis, “Ethics Across the
Curriculum: Teaching Professional Responsibility in Technical Courses”, Teaching Philosophy
16 (September 1993): 205-235. For a reflection of what I have learned about holding such
workshops over the last fifteen years, see Michael Davis, “IIT’S Workshops for Integrating
Ethics into Technical Courses: Some Lessons Learned”, Teaching Ethics, forthcoming.
b. A micro-insertion is any “ethics moment” less than a class period, typically much less.
_________________________________________________________________________________

Address for correspondence: Michael Davis, Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions,
Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, IL 60616, USA; Email: davism@iit.edu.

1353-3452 © 2005 Opragen Publications, POB 54, Guildford GU1 2YF, UK. http://www.opragen.co.uk

Science and Engineering Ethics, Volume 11, Issue 4, 2005 631

M. Davis

Rudnicka, part of a larger effort at the University of Pittsburgh, reports on her efforts to
integrate ethics into an undergraduate course in Operations Research—Management
Science.4 Her appendices include “The Pittsburgh-Mines Engineering Ethics
Assessment Rubric”, a useful framework for grading ethics assignments. Larry
Simonson, an engineer, describes a grander undertaking, how the South Dakota School
of Mines and Technology is integrating professional ethics across the entire technical
curriculum.5 Last, Fred van Dyke, an environmental biologist at Wheaton College
(Illinois), describes how he introduces his students to the idea that environmental
management requires judgments of value as well as application of science (and
regulations).6 Clarity about such judgments of value is part of good environmental
management.
How successful are efforts to integrate ethics into the curriculum in this way?
Rudicka reports her students’ response to a questionnaire developed at IIT for the first
NSF-sponsored workshop. Most of the 160 faculty who graduated the workshop have
used the same form to assess their students’ response the first time they included ethics
in a course. The evaluation form has eight questions. Four (1, 3, 5, and 8) require “yes”
or “no” as an answer. One (7) asks “too much”, “too little”, or “just the right amount”
and then invites an explanation. The other three (2, 4, and 6) are open ended. Several
IIT graduate students have been entering these responses into a database for me. So far,
we have entered the answers to questions for 2068 questionnaires, somewhat more than
half of the total number of evaluations collected. We began with the most recent,
working our way back. Here are the results (as of August 1, 2005).

• Question 1 asked, “Did this course improve your awareness of ethics issues
likely to arise in your profession or job?” Almost 89% of the answers (1834)
were “yes”.
• Question 3 asked, “Did this course do anything to change your understanding of
the importance of professional or business ethics?” Just over 74% of the answers
(1536) were “yes”.
• Question 5 asked, “Did this course improve you ability to deal with the ethical
issues it raised?” Almost 78% of the answers (1604) were yes.
• Question 7 asked (in part), “In your opinion, did this course spend too much
time on professional or business ethics, too little, or just the right amount.”
Almost 70% (1430) answer “right amount” with another 10% (220) answering
“too little”.
• Question 8 asked, “Did you have any professional or business ethics in a class
c
before this one?” Just over two-thirds of the answers (1392) were “no”.
Clearly, students can see the ethics even when integrated into a technical course
and like what they see. But what do they learn?

c. This is a disappointing percentage after a decade in which many accrediting bodies have required
ethics in engineering, computer science, and other scientific curricula. The number has not
dropped much as we have worked our way back through the years.

632 Science and Engineering Ethics, Volume 11, Issue 4, 2005

 A Symposium―Integrating Ethics into Engineering and Science Courses

Professional ethics, as I understand that term, consists of special (morally

permissible) standards of conduct, something beyond what law, market, morality, and
public opinion would otherwise require, standards typically found in a profession’s
code of ethics. They are standards every member of the profession—or, at least, every
member at her rational best—wants everyone else in the profession to follow even if
the price of having the others follow them would be having to do the same. Teaching
professional ethics (in this sense) is (in part at least) doing one or more of the
following:

• increasing student sensitivity to issues involving their profession’s standards

(can they identify the ethical issues in a situation?);
• improving student knowledge relevant to resolving an ethical issue once it has
been noticed (everything from being aware of the appropriate standard to
consider—and how to interpret it—to knowing where to go to file a complaint
or ask advice);
• enhancing student judgment (the ability to develop an acceptable course of
action and provide a reasonable justification); and
• increasing student commitment to the standards of their profession (the
probability that the student will act on them).7
There is no way to test the last of these in the classroom—or, indeed, any easy way
to show that one has succeeded. The best attempt to measure successful change of
conduct has consisted of systematically soliciting impressions others have of the
environment.8
In contrast, the first three objectives are no harder to evaluate than the teaching of
technical sensitivity, technical knowledge, and technical judgment (of which
professional sensitivity, knowledge, and judgment are in fact parts). If one wants to see
whether students are more sensitive to ethical issues, one need only give them a set of
“cases” or “scenarios” at the beginning of the term, asking them to identify all the
ethical issues they can, and do the same at the end of the term. If they identify
significantly more ethical issues at the end of the term, they have gained in ethical
sensitivity. One can measure improvement in students’ knowledge and judgment in
much the same way. Until recently, the problem has been finding techniques for
measuring the sensitivity, knowledge, and judgment in ways that allow comparison
across instructors and institutions.9 The Defined Issues Test (DIT) allowed for such
measurement for moral judgment which, it seems, must be at least a component of
ethical judgment. For sensitivity and knowledge, we lacked even that sort of partial
measure. Now Hashemian and Loui (forthcoming) have developed a procedure for
interviewing students who have experienced an ethics component and comparing their
responses to students who have not experienced that component. They have, it seems,
been able to demonstrate significant differences even from a single micro-insertion. If
their technique proves reliable, and others can confirm their preliminary results, we
shall soon be able to measure relatively accurately the contribution micro-insertion
makes to learning professional ethics.10

Science and Engineering Ethics, Volume 11, Issue 4, 2005 633

 M. Davis

REFERENCES

1. Davis, M. (2004) Five Kinds of Ethics Across the Curriculum: An Introduction to Four
Experiments with One Kind. Teaching Ethics 4 (Spring): 1-14.
2. Davis, M. (forthcoming) Integrating Ethics into Technical Courses: Micro-Insertion. Science and
Engineering Ethics.
3. Appel, F. (2005) Ethics Across the Computer Science Curriculum: Privacy Modules in an
Introductory Database Course, Science and Engineering Ethics 11 (4): 635-644.
4. Rudnicka, E. A. (2005) Ethics in an Operations Management Course, Science and Engineering
Ethics 11 (4): 645-654.
5. Simonson, L. (2005) Introducing Ethics across the Curriculum at South Dakota School of Mines
and Technology, Science and Engineering Ethics 11 (4): 655-658.
6. Van Dyke, F. (2005) Teaching Ethical Analysis in Environmental Management Decisions: A
Process-Oriented Approach, Science and Engineering Ethics 11 (4): 659-669.
7. Davis, M. (1999) Ethics and the University. Routledge: London; Davis, M. (2002) Profession,
Code, and Ethics. Ashgate: Aldershot, England.
8. McCabe, D.L. and Linda Klebe Trevino (1993) Academic dishonesty: honor codes and other
contextual influences. Journal of Higher Education 64 (September): 522-539; and McCabe, D.L.
and Linda Klebe Trevino (2001) Dishonesty in Academic Environments: The Influence of Peer
Reporting Requirements. Journal of Higher Education 72 (January): 1-29. Unfortunately,
McCabe has not yet done work like this for teaching professional ethics.
9. Bebeau, M. (1993) Designing an Outcome-Based Ethics Curriculum on Moral Reasoning:
Strategies and Evidence of Effectiveness. Journal of Moral Education 22: 313-326. Bebeau, M. J.
et al. (1999) Beyond the Promise: A Perspective on Research in Moral Education; Educational
Researcher 28: 18-26; and Bebeau, M.J. (2001) Influencing the Moral Dimensions of
Professional Practice: Implications for Teaching and Assessing for Research Integrity.
Proceedings: ORI Conference on Research on Research Integrity.
10. Hashemian, G. and Loui, M. (2005) Engineering Courage: From ‘Not My Business’ to Positive
Responsibility, unpublished.

634 Science and Engineering Ethics, Volume 11, Issue 4, 2005

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