While ethics education for chemical engineers has been emphasized, potential misalignment between the content of current ethics education and engineers’ actual practice has been pointed out. To help improve ethics education for chemical engineers, this research-to-practice paper presents six descriptions of engineers’ experiences related to ethics. The descriptions were constructed based on in-depth interviews with six chemical engineers who are currently working in the health products industry. As the descriptions provide evidence that ethics is pervasive in chemical engineers’ daily practices, we argue that chemical engineering curriculum should include instruction relative to professional ethics in actual practice. This paper concludes with a discussion on potential ways to utilize these descriptions in ethics education.
Dayoung Kim is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Engineering Education at Virginia Tech with research interest/expertise in engineering practice, ethics, and related policy concerns.
Alison Kerr received a doctoral degree in Industrial-Organizational Psychology from The University of Tulsa. Her research interests include training development and evaluation as explored across a variety of academic disciplines and organizational settings. She is currently assisting on a number of training projects aimed at developing engineering students on relevant non-technical professional skills including ethical practice and presentation.
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