Though much has been said about what might constitute "engineering ethics" - or even what might constitute "ethics," for that matter - and perhaps more has been said about how best to teach ethics across the curriculum, much of therelevant literatureis still markedly academic and gives inadequate treatment toapplied or service-learning engineering contexts. Since service learning programs are by definition centered on direct interaction with the community - meaning the point at which students have direct contact with stakeholdersin the community comes sooner than it would otherwise - we believe the development of useable, practical ethical skills must come sooner, too. The disconnection in the literature on engineering ethics from the particular situation of service learning experiences, then, is problematic. Traditional classroom courses remain separated from the world outside the university, and sooftenplace less emphasis, and certainly less urgency, on teaching ethics. But service learning programs carry a greater responsibility to teach their students how to act "right". They have a necessary urgency to their instruction in ethics and a unique gravity about the effectiveness of this instruction. Taking this proposition as our starting point, we see our positions as administrators of EPICS, a large, multi-disciplinary, service-learning design course at Purdue University, as an opportunity to infuse within our regular curriculum a practical course of instruction in ethics. Our goal in this regard is to help students learn viable skills that will enable them to work through a moral decision-making process on their own as they encounter ethical issues in the course of their profession and beyond.
展开▼
