Integration Of First Year English With Introduction To Engineering Design With An Emphasis On Questions Of Ethics

Fundamental to engineering education, and mandated by ABET is that students engage with questions of ethics. Too often, however, this does not occur until late in the student’s career. In the Foundation Coalition Freshman Integrated Program in Engineering at Arizona State University, we believe that concern for ethics must be integrated vertically into the curriculum beginning in the first year of the student’s career. This can be successfully achieved if freshman English and engineering design are integrated, as we have been able to do. We introduce our students in their first semester to the ancient rhetors’ concept of values and use that to explore specific engineering codes of ethics and decision-making tools employed in engineering. This foundation then allows students to critically analyze case histories and discover for themselves that ethical considerations are and must be part of the decision-making processes they employ, even when the tools they use cut out such considerations. This foundation allows us to then explore ethical considerations vertically throughout their careers as engineering students. Therefore, we urge educators to consider the possibility of developing integrated courses that allow students to connect the intellectual rhetorics of inquiry developed in freshman English classes with their engineering classes so that students can truly appreciate and comprehend the importance of ethics in their future professional lives.