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McLean starts by describing the ethical requirements of engineering students in college degree plans and how the number of courses are insufficient to build a solid ethical foundation for engineers. Understanding the societal and ethical impacts of different decisions can be daunting and requires a certain level of ethical awareness. To display this, Mclean explains different issues engineers may face that draw on an engineer’s ability to consider different ethical consequences. These areas can be encapsulated into three different categories: technical, professional, and social ethics.
He moves from the question of how to the question of why as he traverses these levels. He then establishes the two types of knowledge that engineers acquire which are process and material knowledge. The former deals with general skills and thought processes acquired throughout an engineer’s education, while the latter deals with traditional teaching methods such as mathematical formulas and repeatable methods. Following this, McLean looks at where ethics can be integrated into these knowledge categories, looking at process knowledge as a natural setting for ethical questions to be raised.
McLean takes a stance by displaying the lack of focus on ethics in engineering degree plans.
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This can bring about certain implications in the minds of engineering students. Some consequences include making the student think ethics is not very important, lead to frustration due to lack of preparation in the form of previous courses, and not enough time spent towards studying ethics. To illustrate this, he draws similarities and differences between the typical engineering degree in America and in Canada.
In America it is common to see that only one upper level ethics course, usually at the senior level, is required to satisfy the ethics requirement in engineering. Canada seems to follow the same path, but they also require engineering students to pass a written examination regarding ethics in the workplace. I agree there is a lack of ethics courses in engineering degree plans. However; adding courses raises the question of whether it would take away from technical focuses integrated into those degrees. The balance between ethics and technical focus will have to be established. Personally, I think being thrown into a senior level ethics course is very difficult. I had no idea what it entailed and how quickly the course topics are presented and discussed. I think adding even one ethics-based course to a student’s freshman or sophomore year would help better prepare them for the upper level course. By building a foundation early on, it would allow students to understand the importance ethics plays in the world. They would be better equipped with delving into topics explored within the upper level course and in turn have a better understanding of ethical engineering.
To understand the ethical issues an engineer might face in their career we need to look at a hierarchical structure that Mclean lays out in Integrating Ethics and Design. He separates ethics into three levels which are technical, professional, and social ethics. These levels range from an engineer’s design decisions, an engineer’s interactions with stakeholders, and the higher political impact of the products the engineer produces. By incorporating more ethics focused courses in an engineer’s degree plan it would better prepare them to face these types of issues. Being able to discern between different ethical issues can lead to a better assessment of a situation and therefore a better idea of how to go about dealing with it.
In conclusion, it is apparent that ethics plays a role in different areas within the workplace and can be a valuable tool for engineers. They will be able to draw on this to weigh the consequences of different decisions and be more mindful and confident when faced with ethical issues. I agree with McLean’s position that the current state of ethics in engineering programs needs to be reconsidered.
Integrating Ethics and Design Response. (2021, Dec 20). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/integrating-ethics-and-design-response-essay
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