The construction industry has experienced malpractice, which is a significant cause for concern. Does the nature of the industry provide some hint for tracing the underlying reasons of the relatively severe ethical problems in construction? Can one of the most influential stakeholders in the industry, the professionals, improve the situation? This study was conducted in Hong Kong to investigate what kinds of ethical problems are faced by construction professionals, and to explore the factors influencing their ethical decision making. Statistical factor analyses identified six intuitive underlying factors that affect ethical decision making when construction professionals are facing ethical dilemmas in the industry. Four of them influencing decision making are “deontological factor,” “consequential factor—egoism,” “consequential factor—utilitarianism,” and “legal requirement.” Two other factors are “oneself/family” and “stakeholders.” Results show that construction professionals’ ethical behavior is guided by legal requirements. When making ethical decisions, they adopt an egoism approach that prioritizes their self-interest and their families’ interests higher than the public’s interest; they would consciously evaluate the consequences of any unethical behavior.

Increasing awareness of sustainability has affected civil engineering education, making it more complex and demonstrating the connections to economic, social, and technological problems. Environmental consciousness in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries is growing, but in Greece the subject still tends to remain a marginalized and compartmentalized corner of educational systems. Environmental education means more than transmitting knowledge about the environment; it is also about educating for sustainable development. One of the main issues involved is changing people’s attitudes, values, behavior, and consumption patterns. University education in Greece aims to educate engineers so that besides acquiring theoretical knowledge they also learn to show personal responsibility and are motivated to act sustainably. Educating for sustainable development also entails the development of critical capacities and the necessary skills to be able to identify and formulate problems. This paper outlines the way in which a multidisciplinary approach to teaching sustainability has been embodied in the Civil Engineering Department at the University of Thessaly, Greece. More specifically, it describes a course to develop a comprehensive information technology-based learning resource comprising a set of multidisciplinary case studies and support material in order to aid engineering students in understanding the sustainability concepts and how solutions can be developed.

Recent studies have reported on the benefits of dynamic assessment (DA) in improving student learning and achievement through diagnostic monitoring of student misunderstandings, providing context-specific feedback, and assessing the improvement thereafter. Following these reports, a computer-based DA system has been developed by us for use in an undergraduate hydraulic engineering course. This case study presents data collected before and after implementation of this DA system that shows improvement in student performance. In this study, student performance is quantified by the percent of questions correctly answered in the fundamentals of engineering (FE) exam relative to the national average. Since implementation of the DA system in 2004, this measure for our students has increased from below national level [ $\text{mean}=0.942$ ; $\mathrm{SD}=0.068$ ] in nine administrations of the FE exam, to above national level ( $\text{mean}=1.068$ ; $\mathrm{SD}=0.028$ ) in the last five administrations. Based on this measure, performance of these students in fluid mechanics has been higher than that in the other subjects where DA was not used ( $\text{mean}=1.068$ ; $\mathrm{SD}=0.028$ versus $\text{mean}=0.854$ ; $\mathrm{SD}=0.029$ ). Performance of our students in fluid mechanics has also been higher than that of their peers in the Carnegie top tier programs ( $\text{mean}=1.068$ ; $\mathrm{SD}=0.028$ versus $\text{mean}=1.022$ ; $\mathrm{SD}=0.020$ ).

There is evidence that engineering products, processes, systems, and infrastructures are causing human illness in industrialized societies. A possible cause is the technical focus of engineering education and practice and their lack of emphasis on human health considerations in design and decision making. In this paper, the knowledge strategy of Vanderburg is proposed as the pedagogical basis for training undergraduate engineers in identifying and understanding human health problems to preventively address these problems in design and decision making. The knowledge strategy motivates changes to the traditional engineering curriculum to broaden the vantage point of engineering design and decision making, and to integrate principles from public health fields into design and decision making to prevent human illness. The import of public health principles from relevant life science and social science fields for inclusion in engineering education is discussed. The paper is concluded by discussing what public health contributions an enhanced engineering profession can make to industrialized countries.