When the Life Lesson is More Important than Course Content

In many academic programs there are times when students fail in their moral responsibilities and succumb to the easy way out: they cheat. The overwhelming response to such events is assigning a failing grade and making the students repeat the course, or in some cases, dismiss them. What may not happen is remediation of the moral issue leading to a more ethical person. Of course, what we want as faculty and engineers is a graduate who has exemplary ethics. Taking the course over, getting a new grade may do this but are there other ways? This paper is about a real incident and a method of resolving the ethical/moral situation in favor of the course content. It is about learning what is right by stressing what is wrong and how a practicing engineer or an engineering system could stray ethically resulting in violation of our engineering responsibility of safety, health and welfare of the public. Those involved at the faculty level took a chance with this resolution method since this was the first such remediation, and the students responded well to the process. The details of the incident are intentionally sketchy – the resolution procedure and the learning are highlighted.