A foretaste of engineering ethics

Following a spate of major engineering disasters in the recent past, the prominence of technology underlying our civilisation became more apparent to the public at large. Accountability was sought and found to be involving individual engineers at its core. Therefore, in line with well-established disciplines of medical ethics and legal ethics, engineering ethics began to evolve often in concert with business ethics. Because it is still in the evolutionary stages, and because most engineers are more comfortable with numerical studies, they do not feel aptly qualified effectively to contribute to the discourse on engineering ethics. However, this is changing as most recent pedagogically successful discourses are cases based, involving not only factual examples, but calculations as well, to undeniably illustrate and quantify the underlying problem. This paper describes an attempt by the University of Western Sydney to give its first year engineering students a 'foretaste' of formal Engineering Ethics. 'Foretaste' because it was only a small part of a larger Introduction to Professional Practice (IPP), a common subject to all first year engineering students. Nevertheless, it is hoped that it will kindle students' interest in Engineering Ethics and contribute to their being responsible professionals, with due care for the public at large and the planet (as well as themselves!), while discharging their duties. It is also hoped that there will be more space allocated in the IPP for enlarging the current presentation of Engineering Ethics, or that a full Engineering Ethics elective will be offered in senior years. Or both!