Assessing the Ethical Development of Civil Engineering Undergraduates in Support of the ASCE Body of Knowledge
Publication: Journal of Professional Issues in Engineering Education and Practice
Volume 140, Issue 4
Abstract
Developing engineers must be aware that technological development and emerging global issues will require a keen sense of ethical responsibility. Therefore, they must be prepared to reason through and act appropriately on the ethical dilemmas they will experience as professionals. From a civil engineering professional perspective, graduates need to conform to the ASCE Body of Knowledge as they prepare for the Vision of 2025. This investigation evaluated different institutional approaches for ethics education with a goal of better preparing students to be ethical professionals. The project included visiting 19 diverse partner institutions and collecting data from nearly 150 faculty and administrators and more than 4,000 engineering undergraduates including 567 civil engineering undergraduates who completed the survey. Findings suggest that co-curricular experiences have an important influence on ethical development, that quality of instruction is more important than quantity of curricular experiences, that students are less likely to be satisfied with ethics instruction when they have higher ethical reasoning skills, and that the institutional culture makes affects how students behave and how they articulate concepts of ethics. Overall, regression analysis indicates that civil engineering student responses were consistent with the overall engineering undergraduate population. Finally, the research suggests the curricular foundation is in place, but that institutions need to improve their curricular and co-curricular offerings to facilitate ethical development of students and fulfill ASCE Body of Knowledge outcomes.
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Acknowledgments
This research was funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation (EEC Award Nos. 0647532, 0647460 and 0647929). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. The authors acknowledge and thank all of the graduate students who have assisted with this project including Matthew Holsapple, Brian Burt, Robert Bielby, and Eujong Ra.
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Published In
Journal of Professional Issues in Engineering Education and Practice
Volume 140 • Issue 4 • October 2014
Copyright
© 2014 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Feb 15, 2013
Accepted: Jul 19, 2013
Published online: Jul 25, 2013
Discussion open until: Jun 6, 2014
Published in print: Oct 1, 2014
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