Building Critical Thinking, Teamwork, And Communication Skills Through Professional Ethics In Engineering And Chemical Technology

An interdepartmental faculty team has developed an upper-division general education course designed specifically to introduce ethics into technical education using a case-study approach. The course is designed to place students in a team problem-solving environment forcing them to sift through and critically analyze information related to the ethical topics studied during the quarter. Students are required to build both written and oral communication skills through position documents and presentations in public forums. Through team and class exercises, students explore and work to understand and communicate to others their stakeholder positions on specific topics. We believe it is important to provide students with an opportunity to study and explore ethics as related to their professions prior to placement in the workforce. An opportunity to research and discuss the effects of professional decisions and their related outcomes both technologically and from an ethical perspective will give them a knowledge base helpful in future decision-making. This course builds upon their preexisting knowledge to examine ethical dimensions of selected topics from their respective disciplines. Case studies force these undergraduate technologists to think critically about choices they might make in their professional lives; for example, the implications of using a particular piping material for an industrial spillway or the decision to use a less environmentally hazardous chemical solvent over another in a laboratory analysis. We are also convinced that a team of faculty from multiple disciplines best teaches a course of this scope thus preventing the focus from becoming unduly biased towards one perspective.