Engineering in a crisis : observing students’ perceived roles of engineers during pandemics and natural disasters

Engineers have a responsibility to use their skills to protect the welfare of communities. When these ethical responsibilities are discussed in classrooms, the focus is usually on microethics, which focuses on individual decision-making, rather than macroethics that address broad societal concerns. The COVID-19 pandemic has presented a unique opportunity to assess macroethics attitudes because unjust social, economic, and environmental systems have been brought to the forefront amidst the response (e.g., inequitable healthcare systems). In this paper, we consider the COVID-19 pandemic and natural disasters through the lens of engineering macroethics. We aim to understand students’ macroethics attitudes and perceptions about the responsibilities of engineers. In Fall 2020, we deployed a survey to undergraduate engineering students at two universities (n = 520). We asked students to discuss what they perceived to be the role of the engineering profession in response to the global COVID-19 pandemic and natural disasters. We used qualitative content analyses to explore responses in which macroethics attitudes are present and to evaluate the actions that students believe engineers should take in the wake of a crisis. Many of these responses include considerations of infrastructure resilience, resource distribution, and community equity. Logit models were then used to assess the presence of macroethics attitudes in relation to sociodemographic factors of respondents, revealing that factors, including family size, major, and gender influenced these attitudes. Implications from this study include recommendations on curricular content and identifying which student demographic groups would benefit most from intentional macroethical content in coursework.Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineerin

Controversy in wind energy construction projects: How social systems impact project performance

International audienc

Macroethics in Undergraduate Engineering: an Institutional View

Engineering programs tend to focus on technical knowledge rather than developing ethical understanding. Those programs that do teach ethics typically focus on microethics, i.e. issues that arise in particular contexts and interactions between individuals, rather than macroethics, i.e. issues that address societal concerns more broadly. We conducted a systematic literature review of previous work assessing the inclusion of ethics education in undergraduate engineering programs. We used an institutional framework to understand where, in the context of their university experiences, undergraduate students are exposed to ethics. Through this analysis, we found that the most effective way to help students develop an understanding of macroethics is programming outside of the classroom. However, while equity and inclusion are key aspects of macroethics in the engineering profession, exposure to this topic is not accessible to all groups of students due to financial and time constraints that may preclude their participation.This proceeding is published as LaPatin, Michaela, Kasey Faust, C. P. Poleacovschi, Kate Padgett-Walsh, Scott Feinstein, Cassandra Rutherford, and Luan Nguyen. "Macroethics in Undergraduate Engineering: an Institutional View." In Engineering Project Organization Conference (EPOC). 2020. Copyright 2020 The Authors. Posted with permission

Ethical Development in Undergraduate Engineering: Results from a Multi-University Survey

During undergraduate engineering education, curriculum often focuses on technical knowledge rather than ethical development. The role of ethics within the engineering profession, whether broadly or as it applies to specific circumstances, is often given a cursory lesson rather than being woven throughout the curriculum for optimal understanding. When ethics is incorporated into curriculum, programs tend to focus on microethics concerning issues that arise in particular contexts and interactions between individuals, rather than macroethics that address societal concerns more broadly. Notably, students often obtain an informal ethics education—i.e., education outside of the classroom— through involvement in student organizations, internships, or daily interactions with peers. For instance, a student interning at a water resources engineering firm might visit the project site of a stormwater revitalization. Upon visiting, the student can recognize the disparities between communities that typically receive these services fist and those communities of color and lower socioeconomic status that are often ignored. Witnessing this unjust system firsthand can encourage that student to consider systemic inequities in future work. Experiences such as this contribute to a student’s ethical development and can impact their work as an engineering professional. In this study, we aim to understand the differences in ethical development among students based on sociodemographic factors. In April 2020, we deployed a survey to undergraduate students at two universities to assess ethical development using the Defining Issues Test (DIT). The results of this test include a numeric rating indicating the student’s level of ethical development based on Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Development. By using the DIT, we were able to produce a standardized metric to evaluate ethical development across universities, majors, and sociodemographic factors. We used statistical inferencing to explore how sociodemographics were associated with ethics. Here we present the survey analyses, showing that certain demographics may impact a student’s ethical development. For instance, the preliminary results of this study show that women scored higher on the DIT than men. Additionally, those students who identified as liberal had a higher score than those who identified as conservative, and those who identified as less religious scored higher than those who identified as very religious. These results suggest that ethical decisions are grounded in political and religious beliefs. Further research can identify why and how political and religious views influence ethical decision-making.This conference proceeding is published as LaPatin, Michaela Leigh, Cristina Poleacovschi, Kate Padgett Walsh, Scott Grant Feinstein, Luan Minh Nguyen, and Kasey M. Faust. "Ethical Development in Undergraduate Engineering: Results from a Multi-University Survey." In 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access. 2021. https://peer.asee.org/37099. ASEE holds the copyright on this document. It may be read by the public free of charge. Authors may archive their work on personal websites or in institutional repositories with the following citation: © 2021 American Society for Engineering Education. Other scholars may excerpt or quote from these materials with the same citation. When excerpting or quoting from Conference Proceedings, authors should, in addition to noting the ASEE copyright, list all the original authors and their institutions and name the host city of the conference. Posted with permission

A stakeholder-systems analysis of water provision in rural Alaska

People are paramount in the operations of water infrastructure systems. While such processes are similar throughout most communities in the United States, including treatment and distribution, each community encounters localized challenges. In the Yukon-Kuskokwim (YK) Delta of Alaska, specifically, water sector professionals (e.g., water plant operators and water haulers) encounter unique and extreme challenges. The harsh arctic weather makes road navigation dangerous for water haulers, and water plant operators must contend with a precarious supply chain when ordering supplies for maintenance. Such challenges can disrupt water provision for communities. In this study, we analyze semistructured interviews with 24 Alaska water sector professionals, using qualitative content analysis and semicognitive mapping. We built a conceptual integration of systems and stakeholder theory to identify barriers to water provision and leverage points for improvement. We examine three components of the water provision process in rural Alaska communities: water treatment, hauled water distribution, and piped water distribution. We show that to increase workforce retention, limit worker burnout, and ensure reliable water provision, practices including training and certification need to become more localized. Moreover, working conditions and operating environment around the worker need to be more central in water system considerations, especially for water hauling, where workers play a critical role in water distribution. This analysis reveals a key conclusion that underlies all our propositions: people are a leverage point for water provision improvement. In so doing, we contribute to the literature in public administration and bureaucracy, sociotechnical systems, and stakeholder theory as applied to infrastructure systems, more generally, and water systems, more specifically

Standardization versus situatedness: a gray literature metasynthesis of how guidance for Alaska’s water infrastructure management varies by government level

The success of water system operation, maintenance, and management (OMM) critically depends on the local workforce. Extreme environmental conditions, limited financial resources, challenging supply chains, and increased technological requirements especially challenge the workforce to equitably and reliably deliver such OMM services in Alaska. To better understand these challenges, this paper presents a metasynthesis of the gray literature regarding water system management in Alaska, with a particular focus on workforce development and OMM regulation. This synthesis was conducted based on qualitatively coding 49 documents that were representative of the full corpus of 183 documents identified on this topic. While prior work tends to focus on a single regulatory level (national or state), this metasynthesis reveals important differences that occur between regulatory levels of government. More specifically, we find federal and state governments focus more on standardization (one size fits all), while regional and local governments focus more on situatedness (tailoring for every circumstance). This may have equity implications for water utilities in Alaska and other Arctic regions where national and state standards drastically differ and overlook local needs. We find that this theme of standardization versus situatedness may generalize to other state water systems, especially those with similar conditions as Alaska (such as Wyoming and Montana), as well as in other sectors in Alaska beyond water (such as environmental management, nursing, and aviation). Given the multilevel governance of water system OMM, these findings suggest that training materials and programs, certification processes, financial support, and policy decisions could be more effective if they consider the local context in which these water systems are situated more, especially when local conditions markedly differ from national norms. Such an approach may help better ensure more reliable and equitable access to safe drinking water in extreme settings such as those in Alaska and in the Arctic, more generally

Investigating On-campus Engineering Student Organizations as Means of Promoting Ethical Development

Ethics is and should be intrinsic to engineering. However, many engineering students do not recognize that every engineering decision contains ethical dimensions and that underlying values and current sociopolitical and cultural contexts can influence those decisions. One potential way to enhance engineering students’ ethical development is through extra-curricular activities (ECAs). ECAs can include many topics and interests, such as student societies (e.g., fraternities and sororities) and cultural and social organizations (e.g., Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers, Latinos in Science and Engineering, Society of Women Engineers). Previous studies emphasize that participation in student organizations plays an important role in the ethical development of students. Despite this important role, it is not clear whether some student organizations are more successful at enhancing ethical development of engineering students than others, or if it is the act of participation in these organizations itself has an effect on students’ ethical development. We hypothesize that the more organizations students participate in, the higher their ethical development will be. As such, we ask, does participation in more organizations enhances students’ overall moral development? To respond to this question, we distributed a survey to senior engineering students (n=165) at one Midwestern university in the spring of 2020. The survey captured demographics information, membership in student organizations, and the standardized Defining Issue Test-2 (DIT-2), which measures students’ ethical developmental indices (Personal Interest, Maintaining Norms, Post-conventional Thinking Score, and N2Score). The preliminary results suggest that there are significant differences between the groups of students who participated in one organization and two organizations as well as between one organization and three or more organizations, with the largest difference between those who participated in one organization and those who participated in three or more organizations. This suggests that it is possible that students with low PI scores become involved in more student organizations. This project studies student organizations as key sites for ethical learning. The research suggests that students should be encouraged to participate in more student organizations in order to promote their overall ethical development.This conference proceeding is published as Nguyen, Luan M., Cristina Poleacovschi, Kasey M. Faust, Kate Padgett Walsh, Michaela Leigh LaPatin, Scott Grant Feinstein, and Cassandra Rutherford. "Investigating On-campus Engineering Student Organizations as Means of Promoting Ethical Development." In 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access. 2021. https://peer.asee.org/37396 ASEE holds the copyright on this document. It may be read by the public free of charge. Authors may archive their work on personal websites or in institutional repositories with the following citation: © 2021 American Society for Engineering Education. Other scholars may excerpt or quote from these materials with the same citation. When excerpting or quoting from Conference Proceedings, authors should, in addition to noting the ASEE copyright, list all the original authors and their institutions and name the host city of the conference. Posted with permission.

COVID-19 Pandemic Reveals a Major Challenge in Engineering Ethics Education

Engineering ethics education often focuses on the actions of individual engineers as well as their relationship with clients, colleagues, and employers (microethics) while paying less attention to the broader impacts of engineering work on society (macroethics). We can further divide both micro and macroethics into two levels each. Individual microethics refers to the actions of individual engineers while professional microethics refers to the relationships between individual professionals and their clients, colleagues, and employers. Professional macroethics refers to the problems facing members of the engineering profession as a group in their relation to society while social macroethics refers to the technological policy decisions at the societal level. Ideally, an ethical engineer would be able to engage with all four types of ethics, and as such, we ask here, “which pillar of ethics do engineering students engage with when faced with ethical issues surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic?” The COVID-19 pandemic represents an extreme example of an ethical issue that directly affects students’ day-to-day lives. We recognize that students may engage with different pillars of ethics under different scenarios. In this analysis, we aim to provide insights into how we could improve engineering ethics education by identifying with which area(s) of ethics do students engage. Here, we claim that both micro and macroethical thinking are required to address the pandemic and its associated social problems. We distributed a survey to senior engineering students at a Midwestern university (n=171). Preliminary analyses suggested that students engaged with professional macroethics the most while social ethics was rarely mentioned. This is expected as previous studies have shown that many engineering students lack social competencies. The results contribute to further understanding of the area(s) of engineering ethics where students are most proficient. In addition, we propose the possibility of developing a COVID-19 pandemic ethical scenario that could be integrated into curriculum as it taps into various macroethical pillars. The study will contribute to improving the use of the micro-macroethics framework in understanding how students engage with ethics in different scenarios.This conference proceeding is published as Nguyen, Luan M., Cristina Poleacovschi, Kasey M. Faust, Michaela Leigh LaPatin, Kate Padgett Walsh, Scott Grant Feinstein, and Cassandra Rutherford. "COVID-19 Pandemic Reveals a Major Challenge in Engineering Ethics Education." Paper ID #34500. In 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access. 2021. DOI: 10.18260/1-2--36860. ASEE holds the copyright on this document. It may be read by the public free of charge. Authors may archive their work on personal websites or in institutional repositories with the following citation: © 2021 American Society for Engineering Education. Other scholars may excerpt or quote from these materials with the same citation. When excerpting or quoting from Conference Proceedings, authors should, in addition to noting the ASEE copyright, list all the original authors and their institutions and name the host city of the conference. Posted with permission

The Culture of Disenchantment in Engineering Education Revealed through the COVID-19 Pandemic

Previous research has shown that U.S. engineering programs often fail to teach students their professional responsibility to public welfare due to a “culture of disengagement.” Within this culture, students primarily engage with microethics (i.e., particular issues faced by individual engineers and within the engineering profession) and less with macroethics (i.e., the role of engineers in promoting sustainability, influencing public policy, and considering the broader impacts of engineering work). Here, our study explores whether this culture persists when students experience a pressing real-world ethical issue, such as the global COVID-19 pandemic, that directly impacts their day-to-day lives. We conducted a survey of senior engineering students at a university in the Midwest. Results indicate that students are interested in ethics when presented with a problem they are currently experiencing; in this case, the COVID-19 pandemic. Students’ responses to questions about the perceived role of engineers in the pandemic response included aspects of both microethics and macroethics at the individual and professional levels. However, students demonstrated disengagement from the social dimensions of macroethics. Student responses were by and large focused on improving current systems, rather than reimagining how new processes or technological improvements could address social problems such as socioeconomic inequalities exacerbated by this pandemic. That is, students focused in their thinking on how to make incremental adjustments to the status quo (e.g., improving efficiency). These results align with previous research indicating a culture of disengagement amongst engineering students and a broader lack of engagement with ethical issues at the macro-societal levels.This proceeding is published as Nguyen, L., C. Poleacovschi, K. Faust, K. Padgett-Walsh, S. Feinstein, C. Rutherford, and M. LaPatin. "The Culture of Disenchantment in Engineering Education Revealed through the COVID-19 Pandemic." In Engineering Project Organization Conference (EPOC). 2020. Copyright 2020 The Authors. Posted with permission

Evaluating Engineering Students’ Moral Sensitivity in a Natural Disaster Context

Engineered systems are designed to serve societal needs, from bridges providing mobility to communication systems enabling the transfer of information. It is essential that engineers recognize the social impact of their work to ensure they provide equitable benefits across communities when implementing such systems. In times of crisis, such as after natural disasters, these ethical considerations and awareness of community needs are especially important. Ethical development must begin when engineers are still students so that they can be trained to consider ethical issues before they begin working. Ethical development can be observed using James Rest’s Four-Component Model of Morality: moral sensitivity, moral judgement, moral motivation, and moral behavior. Previous work has focused largely on the second stage, moral judgement, which describes the ability to determine which action is morally right when confronted with an ethical issue. Here, however, we focus on the first stage, moral sensitivity, emphasizing one’s ability to recognize a moral issue. Studies show that while moral sensitivity does not always lead to moral behavior; moral sensitivity can help explain variances in moral behavior. Researchers argue that pinpointing students’ gaps in moral sensitivity can help educators identify gaps in engineering ethics curriculum. Towards this goal, we interviewed undergraduate engineering students to evaluate their moral sensitivity, using a current event, the 2021 Hurricane Ida in Southern Louisiana, as background. This natural disaster provided a useful context to evaluate moral sensitivity due to the complex effects of such a crisis on engineered, natural, and social systems. The story is framed using Lind’s Indicators of Ethical Sensitivity, providing the story characteristics, stakeholders, and consequences. We asked interviewees to provide the final indicator—ethical issues. Using a qualitative content analysis, we found that interviewees connected several ethical issues with the primary consequence of socioeconomic inequities. Identified ethical issues included topics of climate change, infrastructure, disaster planning, and corporate/government accountability. Implications of this study include recommendations for future moral sensitivity research and applications to improve classroom learning.ASEE holds the copyright on this document. It may be read by the public free of charge. Authors may archive their work on personal websites or in institutional repositories with the following citation: Lapatin, Michaela, Sara Barrens, Kyudong Kim, Cristina Poleacovschi, Kate Padgett Walsh, Scott Feinstein, Cassandra Rutherford, Luan Nguyen, and Kasey Faust. "Evaluating Engineering Students’ Moral Sensitivity in a Natural Disaster Context." Paper ID #37758. In 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition. 2022. https://peer.asee.org/41540. © 2022 American Society for Engineering Education. Other scholars may excerpt or quote from these materials with the same citation. When excerpting or quoting from Conference Proceedings, authors should, in addition to noting the ASEE copyright, list all the original authors and their institutions and name the host city of the conference. Posted with permission