"The heart and soul of engineering."
That’s how Dr. Steve Nichols, mechanical engineering professor and director of the Chair of Free Enterprise, describes professional responsibility. The topic encompasses not only ethics, but technical competence, professional liability, intellectual property, work quality, environmental responsibility and the health, safety and welfare of clients, employers, employees and the public.
The College of Engineering and the Chair of Free Enterprise have recently initiated several efforts to more effectively integrate topics of professional responsibility into each engineering student’s education.
Central to those initiatives is the PRIME (Professional Responsibility Modules for Engineering) Project, an initiative to develop web-based teaching materials that focus on the value of leadership and professional responsibility in engineering. Spearheaded by the College’s Engineering Communication faculty, the ultimate goal of the PRIME Project is to develop adaptable teaching modules that will help engineering faculty incorporate topics concerning leadership and professional responsibility into their curricula.
In September of 2004, Dr. Stephanie Bird, a leader in the field of engineering ethics and co-editor of the international journal, Science and Research Ethics, came to Austin at the invitation of the Chair for Free Enterprise to consult with and advise the PRIME committee. She helped create modules concerning information ethics, an area that addresses plagiarism and “ownership of the written word.” In addition she offered suggestions to create more effective collaboration between students. She also taught a class to model her approach to leading discussions about ethics.
The Faculty Innovation Center, which provides media and instructional development services within the College, has developed online information resources regarding professional responsibility for engineers. They include topics such as morals vs. professional ethics and the role of the engineer in society, and can be viewed at http://www.engr.utexas.edu/ethics/.
The Chair of Free Enterprise and the College of Engineering helped sponsor the University of Texas Ethics Conference in April to engage the academic and public communities in an increasing awareness of the need and resources for ethics instruction and ethical living across all disciplines, including engineering. Because of its success, a second conference is in the works for spring 2005.
Several faculty members have received academic development grants to integrate these topics into their courses. Dr. Kenneth Diller, chairman of the biomedical engineering department, developed learning modules called “Topics of Professional Responsibility,” which integrate professional responsibility into his entire department’s curriculum. They include topics such as stem cell research and the use of human subjects in research, among others. These instructional materials are available online at http://www.engr.utexas.edu/ethics/modules.cfm for use by students and faculty.
Dr. Harovel Wheat, professor of mechanical engineering, is developing course activities to be integrated throughout the semester, keeping professional responsibility “in the back of their minds” during the entire course. She says many students view technology innovation/creativity, professional responsibility and leadership as separate and abstract entities. Her activities, and these other initiatives, intend to teach future engineers that each of these topics are not mutually exclusive but parts of the entire engineering experience.
Email this article to a friend
About UT's Cockrell School of Engineering:
The University of Texas at Austin's Cockrell School of Engineering ranks among the top six public engineering schools in the United States. With the nation's fourth highest number of faculty elected members of the National Academy of Engineering, the School's more than 7,000 students gain exposure to the nation's finest engineering practitioners. Appropriately, the School's logo, an embellished checkmark used by the first UT engineering dean to denote high quality student work, is the nation's oldest quality symbol. The School maintains a Web site at http://www.engr.utexas.edu