Howard & Jan Oringer Seminar

A gap exists between the negligible education about ethical issues in engineering provided to most U.S. undergraduate engineering students and the frequency with which such issues arise in contemporary engineering practice. Professor McGinn will present evidence for this gap, indicate some reasons why it's important that it be bridged, and identify some sources of the increasing pressure to do so. He will identify several approaches to providing engineering students with education about ethical issues in engineering, and will delineate key aspects of his preferred approach to doing so. After describing some foundational materials that are useful in discussing ethical issues in engineering, he will present several real-life examples of ethical issues in engineering that pertain to information science and technology, and that illustrate the variety of ethical issues that can arise in engineering practice. If engineering students are to be well prepared for the challenges they will likely face in their professional careers, study of ethical issues in engineering should become an integral element of the undergraduate engineering curriculum.