Ethics as an outcome of out-of-class engagement across diverse groups of engineering students

ABSTRACT

Engineers need to prioritise public welfare and understand how their decisions affect social and environmental systems. These responsibilities require engineers to uphold high ethical standards and undergraduate education is a formative time for ethical development. Although ethics have been part of the formal curriculum in the United States, Europe, and Australia for the past few decades, there are persistent challenges in equipping future engineers with ethics-related skills. Current course-based approaches might be insufficient since the curriculum is already packed with technical content. The present research was situated in a socio-ecological framework of engagement and used survey responses to explore ethical standards as an outcome of undergraduate engineering students’ participation in out-of-class activities. The research design sought to examine differential perceptions based on types of activity and student demographics given the importance of population and context in understanding engagement. The results indicated a range of activities in which students perceived ethical standards as an outcome. The results indicated that perceptions of attaining ethics and correlation with other outcomes varied by setting and students’ gender and race/ethnicity. The results illuminate opportunities to leverage out-of-class activities to support the development of ethics and the importance of considering the contextual nuances of engagement.

KEYWORDS:

• Ethics
• engagement
• co-curricular
• out-of-class
• underrepresented students
• diversity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation under [Grant no. 1351156 and 1911881].

Notes on contributors

Madeline Polmear

Madeline Polmear is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Civil & Coastal Engineering at the University of Florida. She completed her B.S. in environmental engineering, M.S. in civil engineering, and Ph.D. in civil engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her research focuses on the professional preparation of engineering students by bridging technical and nontechnical competencies inside and outside of the classroom. 

Anh D. Chau

Anh D. Chau is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Civil & Coastal Engineering at the University of Florida. He completed his B.S. at Bach Khoa University and his M.S. and Ph.D. at the University of Alabama, all in civil engineering. His research interests include construction workforce training, decision support systems, and big data analytics. 

Denise R. Simmons

Denise R. Simmons, PE, PMP, LEED-AP is an Associate Professor of Civil Engineering and holds a B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in civil engineering (CE) and a graduate certificate in engineering education. She has over ten years of construction and CE experience working for energy companies and as a project management consultant. She has extensive experience leading and conducting multi-institutional, workforce-related research and outreach. She is a leader in research investigating professional formation of civil engineers, with a specific focus on project management and the practical strategies that transform and sustain inclusive and productive organizations. She currently oversees the Simmons Research Lab (SRL: www.denisersimmons.com), which is home to a dynamic, interdisciplinary mix of graduate researchers and postdoctoral researchers working at the intersection of construction engineering and management, workforce development, and CE education. The SRL is supported by multiple research grants, including a CAREER award funded by the National Science Foundation.