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Engineering in Society: Why Engineers are Important in the Modern World

assignment of engineering in society

Engineers are curious-minded people focused on solving problems and finding solutions to the world’s most complex challenges. Furthermore, we owe most of today’s technological advancements and comforts to the ingenuity of engineers.

Not to mention that they made things more fun for themselves as well. A career in engineering is a lot more fun today than it used to be 50 years ago. With today’s available materials and technology, engineers are free to work on complex issues such as disaster recovery, poverty, overcrowding of cities, and more.

So, if you’re still wondering why we need engineers in a world where the technology is already advanced enough to start thinking for itself, we have a few thoughts that may tickle your mind.

Forever Learners

If nothing else, engineers are a fantastic example of why we should never stop learning. These people are curious by nature, but if they want to stay at the top of their game, they must be always a few steps ahead.

And, with new devices and systems popping up all over the world, it takes a special dedication to continuous learning and skill-sharpening. For instance, just to become a Professional Engineer, in the field they chose, one needs to invest extra effort in study and practice (like attending a PE review course ).

As a PE, you prove your commitment to high ethical standards and your knowledge level, which opens new doors for your career. This is why many engineers are quick to take the PE exam as soon as they leave academia. It’s a way to further your career and become more trustworthy to companies and people who may have interesting projects to offer.

In summary, when it comes to learning, engineers are the role model to follow. If we stay curious and open our minds to new information and possibilities, we have the chance to make the world a better place.

Protecting the Environment

Currently, we are facing one of the biggest challenges of modern times: climate change. Our way of living is under threat from Mother Nature, and it’s partially our fault. The accelerated development of human civilization in the last couple hundred years added to the natural changes of the climate and is slowly but surely making the world uninhabitable.

Sadly, current political and economical interests don’t allow room for change, but environmental and energy engineers have the tools to fight for everyone’s rights.

The field of energy development is currently working hard at creating ecologically friendly energy sources that can replace the ones based on fuel and carbon. In addition, engineers also try to create new technologies that detect high-levels of pollution and convey the information to decision-makers.

This led to the creation of non-polluting energy sources such as alternative fuels based on hydrogen, fuel cells, and others. Even more, we now have several reliable air, soil, and groundwater restoration systems that may convey results in the future.

In addition, there are entire teams dedicated to identifying and eliminating pathogens that can be found in the soil and drinking water of developing nations. These pathogens can cause serious illnesses that may have the capacity to decimate entire populations.

In summary, we desperately need engineers interested in solving problems that affect the environment. If they manage to tackle the problem of pollution in the air, soil, and groundwater, human civilization can improve and continue to develop without conflict or violence.

Access to Advanced Communication Systems

Even though most western civilization is heavily connected to the Internet (who hasn’t got a phone, a laptop, and a Smart TV these days?), there are still large areas of the world where access is limited or non-existent.

assignment of engineering in society

source: https://pixabay.com/photos/cell-site-solar-generator-4494481/

This means large masses of people don’t have access to life-altering technologies that could help them get better jobs and improve their living conditions. It also means that health professionals, scientists, and decision-makers don’t have access to the latest discoveries in their fields, which hinders the overall development of the nation.

To make things worse, some leaders of developed countries take advantage of the situation and push complex problems such as recycling dangerous materials or massive deforestation (to name a few) onto the shoulders of impoverished nations.

As the gap in access to the Internet is starting to close (thanks to ingenious engineers), these situations are easier to identify and bring under the public eye. And, with solutions like the Starling network developed by SpaceX, there is a chance that everyone will be connected in the near future.

However, without the work of dedicated professional engineers, the Starlink network of satellites wouldn’t have been possible (even though they are prone to ruin stargazing for everyone ).

Better Food for Everyone

While it’s hard to believe (from a westerner’s point of view), 1 in 9 people doesn’t get enough to eat. And, according to the 2019 World Hunger Map, there are many areas that battle with the problem of limited access to quality food.

There are many reasons for this lack of food (low soil fertility, overpopulation, primitive farming methods, no clean water supplies, and so on) but engineering innovations can help improve the situation.

Engineers in various fields are the ones who managed to develop crops, fruits, and vegetables that grow even in less fertile areas and are more resistant to diseases and other attackers. Even more, engineers also helped create solutions for reducing the use of pesticides without affecting the quantity of food produced. They also helped develop machines used in farming and harvesting.

In addition, as the population increases, we will need to find ways to produce more food without having access to more land. This means new equipment using eco-friendly energy sources that won’t drain the environmental resources.

In the end, it’s important to understand that our world was built with the hard work of engineers. Of course, many of today’s discoveries, treatments, and processing methodologies are administered and used by other types of specialists. But they couldn’t be doing their jobs without the machines and technologies that engineers developed.

And we are not done! We have more problems to solve and new challenges to discover. So yes, the modern world couldn’t live or continue to develop without the curiosity and ingeniosity of engineers!

This article does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors or management of EconoTimes

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2.4: The Global and Societal Impact of Engineering

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Engineering has had an impact on all aspects of society. Look around you and notice all of the things that have been made by humans. Through designing, manufacturing, testing, or selling, an engineer probably had something to do with most of these human-made items.

Great Engineering Achievements

Can you think of some great engineering achievements? Take a few moments to make a list of some of the most important things engineers have developed. It might help to think of things that have changed the way that people live. For example, a century ago people relied on candles and lanterns for light. How has this changed? When you are finished making a list, share it with someone else and find out what they think are the most important engineering accomplishments.

Now that you have a list of great engineering achievements, see what others have identified as the most important accomplishments of this century. In the following, you will find several figures, each representing a significant engineering accomplishment of the twentieth century. Look at each figure carefully and try to determine what engineering accomplishment it represents. Check to see if you have the accomplishment on your list. If it is not there, add it. Each accomplishment is briefly discussed after the figure.

The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) has identified the top twenty engineering achievements of the twentieth century. The NAE has created a webpage ( http://www.greatachievements.org/ ) which describes these achievements and the impacts that these achievements have in the everyday lives of people. Many of these achievements are so commonly used in our society that we take them for granted. We describe ten of the twenty achievements; the other ten achievements can be found at the NAE webpage.

alt

The skyline of the Pudong New Area in Shanghai, China at night.

alt

The lights of major cities around the world are visible from space at night.

The Figure above shows the bright lights of the Pudong New Area in Shanghai, China. The next Figure above shows lights visible from space at night represent electrification. Electrification is the process of making electricity available to large numbers of people. We use electricity not only for light, but also to power machinery, instruments, and appliances. How many electric or battery powered devices do you use in a day? Without electrification, we would not have any of these devices today.

A Toyota concept car.

A Toyota concept car.

The Figure above shows a rather high-tech looking automobile. The first cars produced in the United States were sold in 1901, primarily as novelties to the wealthy. However, by 1920 automobiles were mass-produced. Prior to the automobile people worked close to where they lived; one had to live in the city in order to work in the city, as the largest distance that it was practical to travel regularly was only a few miles. A farm or a factory that was not close to a city could not easily transport goods to market. Thus the automobile is credited with freeing people from the limitations of geography and with greatly contributing to raising incomes and wealth.

alt

A high flying jet aircraft leaves contrails in the sky. A contrail is the white streak (or cloud) formed behind a high-flying aircraft's engines.

Figure above shows a jet aircraft and its contrails as it flies high in the sky. Airplanes further freed people from the constraints of geography by making rapid long-distance travel possible. Airplanes are also responsible for advancing a global economy.

Clean drinking water flowing from a faucet.

Clean drinking water flowing from a faucet.

Figure above shows a water faucet, and represents the supply and distribution of clean water. Clean water has had a significant impact on human life. During the 1700s and 1800s, thousands of people died from diseases including cholera, typhus, and waterborne typhoid fever, and thousands upon thousands became ill. A clean water supply and good distribution not only improved health, but also contributed to the growth of new cities, the development of hydropower, the improvement of crop growth, and the availability of water recreation.

An electronics workbench.

An electronics workbench.

Figure above shows an electronics workshop. Our world is filled with electronic devices, including computers, mobile phones, music players, cameras, calculators, ATMs, and televisions to name a few. We use electronics for communication, entertainment, manufacturing, to diagnose disease, to help us drive our cars, and for thousands of everyday activities.

A television that was manufactured in 1953.

A television that was manufactured in 1953.

The image (Figure above) shows an early television, manufactured in 1953. Radio and television are electronic devices that deserve special attention because of their impact on the way news and information are communicated. Prior to the development of these technologies, news and information traveled slowly, through written forms of communication. Today, the television allows people to view world events in real time. With its hundreds of channels, people can also experience other lands and cultures and be entertained.

An irrigation system waters growing cotton plants.

An irrigation system waters growing cotton plants.

The image (Figure above) shows an irrigation system for a large farm, and represents agricultural mechanization (the development of machines that help farmers produce crops). Prior to the development of farm equipment, farmers relied on animals to help them plow their fields. The planting, watering, and harvesting of crops was all done by hand. The amount of work required to produce crops limited the crops that individual farmers could grow. This also meant that many people were employed in farming and many families grew their own produce. Machines made it possible for a single farmer to produce larger quantities of crops, as well as a more consistent quality of crops. This, in turn, provided greater supplies of food for society, and reduced its cost.

An HB85B computer, manufactured in the early 1980s.

An HB85B computer, manufactured in the early 1980s.

The image (Figure above) shows an early computer. Computers change the way we communicate. Computers help us write; this chapter has been written, formatted, and distributed by computer. In engineering and science they perform complex computations; there are many problems, such as weather prediction, that require billions of computations. Without computers, we could not do these complex calculations. Computers are also used to control machines. Computers help guide and fly airplanes; they control the engine in your car. Computers can store vast amounts of information that is readily available, and they connect us to the world through the Internet. Computers facilitate learning, and provide us with a great source of entertainment.

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The LifeStraw is a water purification device designed to filter bacteria out of water and is powered by suction. Water is passed through an iodine-coated bead chamber that kills bacteria and parasites. It costs around $3.75 and can last for a total of 700 liters of water.

The image (Figure above) shows a woman drinking water through a filtration straw, and represents an example of healthcare technology. The specialized straw is capable of filtering harmful bacteria and parasites from polluted water supplies. In the past decades, there have been numerous healthcare technologies developed that have decreased mortality rates , increased life spans, and contributed to a better quality of life. These technologies include advanced surgical techniques, artificial organs, instruments that can diagnose ailments, and preventive healthcare devices.

Walls of apartment buildings.

Walls of apartment buildings.

The image above (Figure above) may be the most difficult to discern. The picture shows the side of a large building with air-conditioning units on many windows. Air-conditioning was originally developed to help cool manufacturing processes. In the mid-1900s, home air-conditioning was developed, fueling an explosive growth in Sunbelt cities such as Las Vegas, Houston, and Phoenix. Air-conditioning has changed our work environments, permitting us to work in greater comfort. It has also shifted the patterns of seasonal work and play.

The ten other great engineering accomplishments of the twentieth century identified by the NAE include highways, spacecraft, the Internet, imaging, household appliances, health technologies, petroleum and petrochemical technologies, laser and fiber optics, nuclear technologies, and high-performance materials.

Enrichment Activity (Medium)

Write a brief report about one of the great engineering achievements of the twentieth century from the list earlier in this chapter. Give some specific examples of how the achievement has changed the way that people live and explain why the achievement is important.

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Before the telegraph, telephone and automobile, messages were sent by horseback. This figure shows the official seal of the Post Office Department, the predecessor of the United States Postal Service.

The Impact of Engineering

To understand the impact of engineering on society we can imagine how people lived 100 years ago before these technologies existed. For example, how did people communicate without telephones and the Internet? The primary method of long-distance communication was letters. While letters are a wonderful means of communication, they take time to write and even more time to be delivered. If the distance between sender and recipient was great, it may have taken months to deliver a letter via Pony Express (Figure above).

Advancements in communication have also helped change the way many companies work today. Remember the profile of Ashley, our first engineer? Ashley works at home managing two engineering teams from across the world. That would not have been possible with letters. Engineering solutions have continually improved the quality of life, added business value, and significantly influenced the global economy .

Engineering has both intended and unintended consequences. For example, air-conditioning makes comfortable life possible in much of southern United States. However, sometimes the unintended consequences of new technologies can be negative. About a decade ago, scientists discovered that Freon and similar gasses used in air conditioners were contributing to damage to the Earth’s protective ozone layer. As a result, new gasses and technology had to be developed. Consider as well the impact on culture from air conditioners. Prior to air-conditioning, many people sat on their front porch in the evenings, in part because their homes were too hot. Also, people often had very high ceilings—a design intended to help with home cooling.

Another example of unintended consequences is several years ago a company developed corn seeds that were highly resistant to weed killers and insects so that farmers would not need to spray poisons on their fields. An unintended consequence was that the new type of corn seed, after it had been growing for several years, started growing in fields where it had not been planted. Farmers tried to kill the unwanted corn plants but were unable to do it because the corn was resistant to the poisons.

The Future of Engineering

It is very difficult to predict the future of engineering, but engineers attempt this whenever they design new products. Engineers try to determine what people will want and need—both now and in the future—and then they design things to fulfill those wants and needs.

While we do not know exactly what will happen in the future, we can examine some possible scenarios. Consider natural catastrophes. There have been many significant catastrophes in the past decade including powerful hurricanes, earthquakes, and tsunamis that have killed hundreds of thousands of people and destroyed a great deal of property. If we go back further in the history of the world we also find that major volcanic eruptions and rare collisions with meteorites have impacted the entire planet. Engineers are working on ways to protect people and property from these disasters as well as ways to predict and respond rapidly to these types of disasters.

alt

Percentage of adults (ages 15-49) in Africa infected with the HIV/AIDS virus in 1999. Percentage of adults (ages 15-49) in Africa infected with the HIV/AIDS virus in 1999. The countries highlighted in light colors had less than 2% infected, while the countries highlighted in dark colors had over 20% and up to 30% infected. Grey countries had no data available.

Another threat to people’s well being comes from disease. Between 1300 and 1500, the bubonic plague killed between one-third and one-half of Europe’s population. Later, cholera killed large numbers as well. Today, these diseases have been largely eradicated in the developed world through engineering of clean water and sanitation systems. However, the world currently faces an AIDS epidemic (Figure above), and there are likely to be new disease threats in the future. Engineers will work with scientists, governments, and health workers to develop and implement technologies that will prevent and respond to these threats.

Another certain need that will be met by engineering is energy. Because all people in the world need energy, the world production and use of energy is growing at a rapid pace. You might recall that both electrification and the automobile were listed as great engineering achievements of the twentieth century. Fossil fuels, the source of energy used most often to produce electricity and to power automobiles, also causes pollution and contributes to global warming. Also, supplies of fossil fuels are limited and becoming more expensive. Some wonder if the world can sustain the current energy growth and consumption patterns. With only a few countries owning the majority of energy resources, there is further concern about the supply of energy at prices that most people can afford. Engineers and scientists are working on developing new energy technologies for the future.

Some emerging trends in engineering are in the areas of biotechnology and nanotechnology. In the area of biotechnology, engineers are working on designs that impact the human body, animals, and plant life. Engineers and scientist are working on technologies to help the blind to see, the hearing impaired to hear, and the disabled to walk. Biotechnology has also opened the possibility of controversial areas such as cloning. Engineers are also working with scientist to develop crops and processes that can be used as fuels for energy.

Nanotechnology refers to the development of products and components that are very small, typically between 1 and 100 nanometers. A nanometer is 1×10−9 meters. A nanometer is so small that it takes a very powerful microscope to see an object of that size. While the area of nanotechnology is very new, it shows promise to provide new technologies ranging from lighter and stronger materials to nanorobots that can repair individual cells to new treatments for cancer.

Enrichment Activity (Long)

Envision the future by designing and drawing a picture of a new product. Explain what need or purpose the new design is fulfilling. Ask others to review your design and give you some feedback. Then use the feedback to redesign your product.

Review Questions

The following questions will help you assess your understanding of the Discovering Engineering Section. There may be one, two, three or even four correct answers to each question. To demonstrate your understanding, you should find all of the correct answers.

  • nanotechnology
  • geotechnology
  • aerotechnology
  • retrotechnology
  • generating and distributing electricity to many different users
  • being shocked by electricity
  • powering machinery, instruments, and appliances with electricity
  • not an important engineering accomplishment
  • have freed people from the limitations of geography
  • are both important engineering accomplishments
  • have the same type of engines
  • are dangerous and should be abandoned
  • provide us with entertainment
  • control machines
  • perform complex computations
  • store vast amounts of information
  • has not had any unanticipated negative consequences
  • contributed to damage of the Earth’s ozone layer
  • was originally developed for use in automobiles
  • makes life comfortable in the southern United States
  • easy to predict
  • determined by engineers trying to design things to fulfill peoples wants and needs
  • tied to energy production
  • not affected by natural disasters

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Home > Books > Social Responsibility

Professional Social Responsibility in Engineering

Submitted: 14 November 2017 Reviewed: 11 January 2018 Published: 11 July 2018

DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.73785

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Social Responsibility

Edited by Ingrid Muenstermann

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This chapter presents a range of viewpoints on the social responsibilities of the engineering profession. These social responsibilities of the engineering profession are in many ways synonymous with macroethics. Analysis of the engineering codes of ethics and educational requirements are used to support these arguments, and are compared with the perceptions of engineering students and working engineers. The social responsibilities of engineers include human safety and environmental protection in engineering designs. But it may extend further to include pro bono work and considerations of social justice issues. Research has found that perceptions of the professional social responsibilities of engineers vary across different countries/cultures, engineering disciplines (e.g., mechanical versus environmental engineers) and by gender. The impact of engineering education and broader college experiences on evolving notions of professional social responsibility will be described, in particular community engagement. Concerns about decreasing commitment to socially responsible engineering among college students, a so-called “culture of disengagement” will be presented, as well of the interaction of students’ social goals for engineering and leaving engineering studies.

  • professional social responsibility
  • individual social responsibility
  • environment
  • higher education
  • social justice

Author Information

Angela r. bielefeldt *.

  • University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA

*Address all correspondence to: [email protected]

1. Introduction

Social responsibilities are a part of all professions. The profession of engineering is no different. However, there are a diversity of opinions within the engineering profession about what specifically these social responsibilities entail, differing among sub-disciplines within engineering and across different countries and cultures. The process by which an individual develops their feelings toward their professional social responsibilities as engineers, and how these values change over time, have been examined. This chapter will highlight the array of opinions and recent research into these areas.

2. Social responsibilities of the engineering profession

The engineering profession has a variety of ethical responsibilities to society and the environment. This field of inquiry has recently been termed macroethics [ 1 ]. But these professional social responsibilities may be in tension with the business side of engineering [ 2 ]. The majority of engineers work for businesses, whose primary motivation is often profit and corporate stockholders, rather than societal impacts. Luckily, this has begun to change based on movement toward corporate social responsibility (CSR) and realizations that companies can thrive economically while considering social and environmental impacts (the triple bottom line). CSR means that companies commit to principles of accountability to community stakeholders, customers, suppliers, employees, and investors. CSR often embraces ideas of sustainability, including human rights and environmental issues, as well as a chain of responsibility and duty of care. Engineering-focused companies often make their commitments to CSR publicly available (e.g., Bechtel [ 3 ]).

The characterization of engineering as a profession is also somewhat in tension. Individual licensing of engineers promotes the notion of profession, but industrial exemptions in the licensing laws somewhat erode this independence from employers [ 4 ]. Zhu and Jesiek [ 5 ] also question whether engineering is a profession in China, based on the lack of an explicit ethical code. It becomes clear when exploring the engineering profession that it should not be viewed as homogeneous, but rather consider that there are distinct cultures in this regard among different sub-disciplines and among countries.

This section presents a few sub-topics related to social responsibility in engineering: human safety, environmental protection and sustainability, pro bono work, social justice, and diversity. The extent to which these elements are included in professional codes of ethics, bodies of knowledge, and requirements for educating engineers are considered to reflect commonly held beliefs related to the social responsibilities of the engineering profession. Further, what a professor chooses to teach engineering students in regards to professional social responsibility has been interpreted as endorsement of the relevance of the topic to the engineering profession. For some topics there is general agreement across engineering sub-disciplines and individuals, while other social responsibilities are being actively debated.

2.1. Human safety

Public trust in engineering requires that the profession considers its impacts on human safety. There is widespread consensus in the codes of ethics of engineering professional societies worldwide that engineering has a primary duty to protect public safety, health, and welfare [ 6 ]. Engineering-related failures or problems that result in injuries or death are often front-page news (e.g., levee failures in New Orleans, interstate bridge collapse in Minnesota, ignition switches in cars) [ 7 , 8 ]. It is of concern that the accumulated impact of frequent news-worthy incidents may over time erode public trust in engineering.

Although generally “bundled,” health, safety, and welfare each have particular nuances. Vesilind [ 9 ] notes that there may be instances when these three elements differ, both in fact and among the perceptions of various groups within the public. Further, the public should not be viewed as a monolith, but rather engineers need to be aware of “diverse publics” with different needs and goals [ 10 , 11 ].

Health is generally characterized as being able to function physically without pain, and may also include mental soundness. Promoting health is a direct goal of biomedical engineering. Environmental and civil engineers are tasked with providing clean drinking water and preventing the spread of toxic chemicals via air, water, and soil. Chemical engineering is involved in manufacturing medicines, as well as pesticides and other chemicals that may have toxic effects. Thinking specifically about health-related issues is perhaps less prevalent in other engineering disciplines. One challenge is the uncertainty that surrounds what is in fact protective of human health, given incomplete toxicological information and difficulties evaluating chronic effects (e.g., cancer). Different countries have different paradigms regulating the development, distribution, and use of new chemicals with regards to the information that is required on human health effects, with some taking a more precautionary approach [ 12 ]. Further, US drinking water regulations take into account both human health and treatment costs. Overall, engineers may disagree on what conditions sufficiently protect human health.

Safety is associated being protected from physical injuries or death, again considering risks. Thus, civil engineering infrastructure that will be safe in the face of hurricanes or earthquakes, construction engineering to protect on-site workers, mechanical engineering of cars to protect occupants during crashes, etc. Other engineering disciplines are also critically important to safety but as sub-systems may garner less attention (such as software engineering for computer controls or electrical engineering). However, public safety broadly applies to all engineering disciplines. The International Education Association knowledge profile for a Washington Accord Program includes “comprehension of… the professional responsibility of an engineer to public safety” [ 13 ]. Disciplinary differences within engineering in the extent that students are taught about safety in their courses were found in a study of engineering educators; among ~1400 survey respondents (96% from institutions in the US), 44% taught engineering/computing students about safety in their courses. However, this varied from 76% in chemical engineering to 26% in computing [ 14 ]. Safety is included explicitly as a cognitive “cross-functional” outcome within the Chemical Engineering Body of Knowledge [ 15 ].

Welfare relates to overall well-being, potentially inclusive of happiness, health, material wealth, and feelings of security. Thus, welfare is more subjective than health or safety, and is correspondingly harder to measure. While protection of human or public welfare is a common statement in US codes of engineering ethics [ 16 , 17 ], this term is not included in some international ethics codes [ 18 , 19 , 20 ]. The Australia code uses the term “wellbeing” in place of welfare [ 18 ]. The Royal Academy of Engineering’s (RAE) Statement of Ethical Principles [ 20 ] includes “public good,” separate from the “health and safety” paramountcy clause. The Chemical Engineering Body of Knowledge [ 15 ] lists “concern for public welfare” among its affective domain outcomes. It is clear that engineers may have different notions of welfare than individuals within the public. Vesilind [ 9 ] gives the examples of engineers reducing speed limits on highways to 55 miles per hour to provide increased safety, but having the majority of the public believe their overall welfare was better served by higher limits that enabled them to reach their destinations more efficiently.

There has been a recent debate about how engineers can best serve this most basic mandate to protect human health and safety. One environmental scientist/engineer, Sedlak, accused others of “crossing the line” from dispassionate researcher to being activists [ 7 ]. Sedlak (trained as an environmental scientist, but a professor of civil and environmental engineering for over 20 years) called into question Prof. Marc Edwards (MS/PhD civil engineering) and his involvement in the Flint, Michigan, lead crisis, and Daniel Carder (BS/MS mechanical engineering) who helped expose the Volkswagen emission problem. Edwards and Carder likely perceived it as their social responsibility as engineers to uphold the preeminent requirement to protect human health and safety [ 21 , 22 ], and acted in compliance with the engineering codes of ethics to expose ethical wrong-doing (e.g., ASCE Canon 1d [ 17 ]). In response to Sedlak’s editorial, a number of individuals shared differing views on the professional responsibilities of environmental engineering and science as related to the public [ 23 , 24 , 25 , 26 , 27 , 28 ]. There are perhaps differences in the social responsibilities of engineers and scientists, and the extent to which individuals identify with these disciplines ([ 24 ] written by a licensed professional engineer, [ 36 ] a Board Certified Environmental Engineer, [ 25 , 27 ] members of the National Academy of Engineers, [ 23 , 25 , 28 ] degrees in chemistry). An individual’s personal identity with respect to their profession may be significant in how they perceive their social responsibilities.

2.2. Environment and sustainability

Engineering codes of ethics include environmental protection among professional social responsibilities ( Table 1 ), with the exception of some specialized sub-disciplines (biomedical and aerospace engineering). “Comprehension of the impacts of engineering activity: … environmental” is one of the knowledge outcomes of a Washington Accord Program [ 13 ]. Environmental considerations in the engineering design process have also been explicitly required for accredited engineering degrees under ABET (Criterion 3, Outcome 2 [ 36 ]). Despite widespread inclusion in codes of ethics and professional education requirements, environmental protection issues do not appear to be an equally prevalent focus of different disciplines within engineering. In a study of engineering educators, an average of 32% of the ~1400 survey respondents taught engineering/computing students about environmental issues, ranging from a high of 76% in environmental engineering to a low of 6% in computing [ 14 ]. Among 180 engineering educators in the study by Romkey [ 37 ], the average implementation of “I encourage students to consider the potential environmental impact of technology” was 2.49 (where 2 = sometimes and 3 = often on a 1–4 scale). Internationally, commitments to environmental protection are generally considered to be somewhat stronger in the EU versus the US.

Inclusion of environmental protection and sustainability responsibilities in the code of ethics from different disciplines and countries.

Engineers’ social responsibility for environmental protection may originate from different ethical frameworks [ 38 ]. From an anthropocentric framework, one may simply understand that preservation of the environment is ultimately self-preservation for human life. Alternatively, from a biocentric perspective one may recognize the intrinsic right to life of all organisms on the planet. The environment and ecology may be viewed to have distinct value, beyond that of maintaining human existence.

A more limited sub-group of countries and engineering disciplines include sustainability and/or sustainable development within their code of ethics ( Table 1 ). Australia’s code shows a commitment to sustainability in the first sentence of the preamble statement, “use of knowledge and skills for the benefit of the community to create engineering solutions for a sustainable future,” and “promote sustainability” is one of the four key statements of ethical practice [ 18 ]. In fact, the mandate to protect the “health, safety and wellbeing of the community” is placed under the heading of promoting sustainability. Sustainability knowledge or abilities are included as stand-alone outcomes within the bodies of knowledge for US chemical, civil, environmental, and professional engineers [ 15 , 39 , 40 , 41 ]. Sustainable design and development as a social responsibility of engineers has been endorsed by many scholars around the globe [ 42 , 43 , 44 , 45 ].

One issue may be the lack of consensus on the meaning of the term sustainability or sustainable development. In general, sustainability includes considerations of both current conditions and future generations, crossing environmental, societal, and economic elements. Sustainability is included in the educational requirements for engineers under the Washington Accord outcomes [ 13 ]. In contrast, sustainability is not explicitly required in engineering education under ABET, which accredits the majority of the programs in the US and additional programs across 30 countries. Sustainability is mentioned as a potential consideration in the engineering design process under both the old ABET EC2000 criteria and the new requirements [ 36 , 46 ]. The new requirements do include considerations of “global, economic, environmental, and societal contexts” within the ethics outcome, but these considerations might be primarily immediate versus long term. Interestingly, more faculty indicated that they teach engineering/computing students about sustainability (42%) as compared to environmental impacts (32%), ranging from 74% in environmental engineering to 15% in biomedical engineering [ 14 ].

2.3. Pro bono

The idea of pro bono work is that professions should donate some of their technical expertise to individuals or organizations unable to pay for those services. This can be providing services for free or at a reduced rate. While this is commonplace in professions such a law and medicine [ 47 ], the idea just seems to be starting to grow in engineering and is by no means universal [ 6 ]. The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) first approved a policy statement on pro bono services in 1996 [ 48 ], encouraging engineers as individuals to provide services to charitable causes and in emergency situations; however, its real purpose appears directed at liability issues and indemnification. The National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE) has a policy statement pertaining to liability of “good samaritans” who volunteer their engineering services upon request in times of crisis [ 49 ].

Within the codes of ethics for engineering, hints of commitment to pro bono service can be found. The NSPE code [ 16 ] states that “Engineers are encouraged to participate in civic affairs; career guidance for youths; and work for the advancement of the safety, health, and well-being of their community”; a similar statement is found in [ 31 ]. The ASCE code [ 17 ] states that “engineers should seek opportunities to be of constructive service in civic affairs and work for…their communities.” However, the mandate for pro bono activity is unclear.

Riley and Lambrinidou [ 11 ] suggest that pro bono service should comprise at least 5% of the employed hours of engineers. Interviews with working engineers found that some engineering companies allow donating standard work hours to engineering service, such as to groups like Engineers Without Borders (EWB)-USA [ 50 ]. Moulton [ 51 ] asserts, “An enormous amount of software development/support is done at low or no cost, for example, public help forums and much of the work toward Open Source/Linux/GNU etc.” (p. 334).

In a study of pro bono engineering in Australia in 2011 [ 52 ], a high demand for pro bono engineering, reasons for engaging in pro bono activities, benefits from pro bono activities, and challenges were documented. A sense of professional responsibility was identified among the motivations for participating in pro bono activities in engineering. While providing rich information and detailed case studies, the research left unanswered questions such as what percentage of engineering companies or individuals engage in pro bono activities, and to what extent (hours per year).

In a small study (methods described in [ 8 ]), working engineers were asked in a survey to rate their agreement with the statement “Engineering firms should take on some pro bono work.” Among the 465 respondents, 12% disagreed, 21% were neutral, and 68% agreed; 49% of the survey respondents had recently graduated (within 1 to 2 years) with an engineering degree from a US institution and 27% of the respondents were members of EWB-USA. Differences in opinions were found based on gender (females higher average agreement), discipline (environmental higher agreement than mechanical), and years since earned Bachelor’s degree (higher agreement for those who earned degree 6 or more years prior). By comparison, responses from US engineering students (n = 4191, 17 institutions, all ranks and majors, 2011–2014) to the same question were: 11% disagree, 34% neutral, 55% agree (Bielefeldt unpublished data, combined from studies described in [ 53 , 54 , 55 ]). Thus, among both engineering students and professionals the majority agreed to some extent that engineering firms should take on pro bono work.

In Australia, the University of Technology Sydney studied the attitudes of their students toward pro bono engineering. Based on a report that students were required to submit after their first internship, it was found that: 20% poorly engaged with the pro bono aspect of the assignment, 10% had not considered pro bono before, 10% acknowledged little knowledge of pro bono in engineering, 30% focused on what they could get out of pro bono work, 20% indicated they might engage in pro bono work in the future, and only 10% showed a clear intention to be involved in pro bono work [ 51 ].

Engineering service groups comprised of volunteers are becoming more popular. A prime example is EWB-USA which works to help meet the basic needs of global communities. In 2015, EWB-USA reported 16,800 members in 288 chapters [ 56 ]. These chapters include both student chapters (typically affiliated with a university or college) and professional chapters. This is a large number of engineering students/ professionals engaged in donating their time to help others through engineering. EWB International (EWB-I) has 65 organizations that are part of its network [ 57 ]. EWB-Australia is particularly active; in 2015–2016 they reported 3275 members/friends, plus 30 university partners with 9513 students engaged in an EWB challenge activity, and 13,000 students engaged via their school outreach program [ 58 ]. They state, “our EWB Connect initiative has been pioneering the creation of a pro bono engineering culture across the profession.” [58, p. 4]. Other examples of pro bono focused engineering service groups include Bridges to Prosperity, Engineering World Health, and the Community Engineering Corps (an alliance of ASCE, EWB-USA, and the American Water Works Association).

In engineering education, pro bono work can take the form of service-learning or Learning through Service, also termed community engagement [ 59 , 60 ]. VanderSteen et al. [ 61 ] discussed humanitarian service-learning projects locally (in Canada) and abroad (Ghana); both appeared to have impacted students’ views of socially responsible engineering. Linkages between community engagement activities among US engineering students and professional social responsibility attitudes were found in a large study [ 62 ]. As well, engineering faculty believe that students learn about ethics and societal impact issues via community engagement activities [ 63 ].

2.4. Social justice

Social justice relates to the distribution of wealth and privileges in society, as well as issues related to poverty and development. There are a growing number of advocates that engineering social responsibility encompasses social justice issues, including engineering faculty in the US [ 64 , 65 ], Australia [ 66 ], Finland [ 67 ], and Colombia [ 68 ]. A group devoted to this issue, Engineering, Social Justice, and Peace (ESJP), routinely hosts a conference. But there are also naysayers [ 69 , 70 , 71 , 72 ], and the majority of the public comments posted with these articles were against social justice education for engineers. For example, one commenter noted “Employers will shun engineers who they suspect may have been indoctrinated with social justice ideas. In short, SJW ideology is a highly destructive virus” [ 71 ]. The robust number of comments posted with these essays speaks to their controversial nature; for example, 279 comments on the Washington Times article [ 72 ].

Many have asserted that the majority of engineering activities are devoted to benefitting the wealthiest on the planet, versus devoting attention to the large percentage of the global population that survives at a near subsistence level. Engineering education programs to address these concerns in the US include the D80 center at Michigan Technological University [ 73 ], the Engineering for Developing Communities Program at the University of Colorado Boulder [ 74 ], and a number of other programs [ 75 ]. There are also similar programs in Spain [ 76 ] and Canada [ 61 ].

There does not appear to be widespread formal education of engineering students about social justice and/or poverty issues; only 17% and 15% of engineering faculty taught these topics in courses, respectively [ 14 ]. However, these topics are reasonably pervasive in co-curricular engineering service groups (such as EWB-USA). Among faculty mentors of engineering service groups, 90% felt students learned about engineering and poverty and 47% felt students learned about social justice.

2.5. Diversity

There are a number of diversity-related issues in engineering. A primary issue is the persistent lack of diversity within the engineering workforce in the United States and many other parts of the world, which is predominated by men and generally lacks racial/ethnic diversity. Other “non-visible” diversity issues relate to socio-economic status (low income individuals under-represented), cognitive and personality types, etc. [ 77 ]. The lack of diversity in the engineering profession is also found in engineering education. Implicit bias and a chilly climate are often cited as potential reasons for the lack of diversity within the engineering profession. It has been argued that this lack of diversity is detrimental to engineering and limits the ability of engineering to best fulfill its mandate to benefit society [ 77 , 78 ]. It is unclear if one of the social responsibilities of the engineering profession relates to employing the diversity of individuals in society. Statements related to diversity in engineering codes of ethics are summarized in Table 2 . Generally, these relate to avoiding discriminatory treatment, but the Australia [ 27 ] and the UK [ 29 ] codes also include language to promote/support diversity. Most recently in the summer of 2017, the ASCE updated its code of ethics to include provisions related to diversity [ 79 ]. The ability to work effectively in diverse teams is an explicitly acknowledged requirement for engineering graduates [ 20 , 46 ]. However, diversity concerns, like social justice, are not universally embraced as being relevant to engineering [ 71 ].

Diversity-related issues in engineering codes of ethics.

Another important issue with respect to diversity is the extent to which the profession fairly compensates workers, without regard to gender, race/ethnicity, etc. In India, female engineering/computing workers generally earn less than male counterparts [ 80 ]. Cech [ 81 ] found that wage differences by gender in engineering within the US might be partially accounted for based on the nature of the work being done with respect to a technical:social dualism hypothesis. It was found that women were more represented among less “technical” sub-disciplines in engineering and among more social tasks in engineering.

3. Individual social responsibility development

An individual’s perceptions of their social responsibilities as engineers will develop over time via the process of professional socialization. The professional socialization process begins with novice views of the engineering profession. These informal influences may include messages from media (e.g., movies, news, books), family or acquaintances (e.g., parent an engineer), and school (primary and secondary). Some students’ pro-social motivations are a driver for their decision to major in engineering [ 54 , 82 ]. This aligns with efforts to market the social benefits of engineering, in line with recommendations from the US National Academy of Engineers “Changing the Conversation” report [ 83 ]. A higher percentage of female engineering students included helping people, helping the environment, and positively impacting society as reasons they chose their engineering major, based on open-ended responses [ 84 ]. Differences were also found among disciplines; a greater percentage of students majoring in environmental and civil engineering described helping goals as compared to students majoring in mechanical engineering [ 54 ]. Among UK students given 7 options as to why they decided to study engineering, only 13.5% selected a desire to ‘make a difference’ to the world; there was no difference between female and male students, and this aspiration was the lowest among 4th year students [ 82 ]. There is also some evidence that students who enter engineering with the strongest pro-social motivations leave engineering majors during college at a higher rate than their peers [ 85 , 86 ].

Professional socialization processes for engineers are more explicitly occurring during higher education and in the engineering workforce. The continuum of the development of professional civil engineers is outlined explicitly in the Civil Engineering Body of Knowledge (BOK) [ 40 ]. Here, the acquisition of various knowledge, skills, and attitudes is mapped from the Bachelor’s degree in engineering, through a Master’s degree or additional formal education, and during mentored experience working under the supervision of a licensed professional engineer. In regards to professional and ethical responsibility, the civil engineering BOK includes proposed affective domain outcomes such as “commit to the standards of professional and ethical responsibility for engineering practice” [40, p. 94]. Within the “attitudes” outcome elements such as honesty, integrity, consideration of others, respect, and tolerance are included [ 40 ].

During higher education, in addition to learning important knowledge and skills, students are developing attitudes and affective outcomes associated with engineering. Professional socialization during higher education includes courses and a variety of informal education experiences outside the classroom, such as professional societies or internships in engineering. A number of studies have explored student perceptions related to elements of social responsibility. Despite bringing students with aspirations toward positive social benefits into engineering, there is evidence that these goals may diminish over time [ 87 , 88 ].

Professional socialization continues into the engineering workforce. While Cech [ 87 ] found continuing evidence of decline in the public service beliefs of alumni from engineering programs after 1.5 years in the workforce, counter-evidence suggests that working engineers may become more committed to their professional social responsibilities over time. A survey of working engineers (Bielefeldt unpublished, from the study described in [ 8 ]) found that the majority (61% of n = 467) agreed with the statement “Since earning my bachelor’s degree, I have become more motivated to help people and society through my work”; only 16% disagreed and 23% were neutral. Responses did not differ by gender but did differ based on years since earning Bachelor’s degree (5 or fewer years lower than 6 or more years) and engineering discipline (mechanical lower than environmental). Similarly, the majority (67%) disagreed with the statement, “Since earning my bachelor’s degree, I have become less confident of my ability to make positive impacts on people and society through engineering.” Responses differed by gender (female stronger agreement than males), years since earning Bachelor’s degree (5 or fewer years more agreement versus 6 or more years), and discipline (environmental stronger agreement than civil).

Models have been proposed to explain the development of professional responsibility attitudes in individual engineers. The Professional Social Responsibility Development Model (PSRDM) [ 89 ] was based on an ethic of care framework, and drew from Schwartz’s [ 90 ] altruistic helping behavior model, Ramsey’s [ 91 ] model for integrating social responsibility into the decision process of scientists, and the Delve [ 92 ] Service Learning Model. The PSRDM includes three realms: personal social awareness, professional development, and professional connectedness. The personal social awareness realm describes one’s personal feelings of a desire to help others, which is inclusive of the dimensions of awareness that needs exist, feelings that one possesses the ability to help, and a connectedness that motivates one to action. Separate from these personal feelings, an engineer should develop professionally. The three dimensions of this realm include one’s belief that a variety of base skills are needed for engineers, feelings that engineering has the capacity to help address societal issues ( professional ability ), and an awareness that one should analyze the societal impacts of engineering and include stakeholders from the community in the engineering process. Finally, it is anticipated that a person’s individual motivations to help will come together with their engineering professional development, to inform their sense of professional connectedness. A personal motivation to help others through application of one’s engineering skills can be fostered through a cycle of engaging in this helping behavior. It will also increase one’s sophistication in their awareness of both the costs and benefits of helping and serving others through engineering.

An Input-Environment-Output type of model derived from Wiedman [ 93 ] was used by Rulifson [ 92 ] to describe the development of professional social responsibility ideas in engineering students. As inputs, individuals bring pre-dispositions toward personal social responsibility and attitudes toward engineering into college. These are developed from family influences and high school, etc. Within higher education, a number of factors have been determined to influence ideas of professional social responsibility. However, Cech [ 87 ] notably found that attitudes toward public service decreased among 326 engineering students attending four US institutions. This concerning trend was termed a “culture of disengagement.” It is perhaps not surprising given that the majority of engineering studies focus on technical issues, and preference technical issues over the interactions of technology with society. This technical:social dualism may reduce students’ focus on the impacts of their work as engineers. However, experiences during engineering studies may counter this decrease in engineering students’ ideas of socially responsible engineering. Some engineering students cited courses as impactful to their views of social responsibility [ 94 ]. Brodeur [ 95 ] suggested a number of ways to integrate social responsibility ideas into engineering education, including the use of the CDIO Syllabus, cooperative learning, constructive controversy, and design-implement projects. Service-learning may advance students’ ideas of social justice [ 96 ] and social responsibility [ 62 , 95 ].

4. Conclusions

There are some elements of engineers’ professional social responsibilities that are widely agreed upon. These include protection of human health and safety, and protection of the environment. Other engineering social responsibilities have less consensus across countries and disciplines, including the mandate to participate in pro bono work, strive for social justice, and embrace diversity. Corporations focused on engineering activities and for which engineers work typically have corporate social responsibility statements which document their commitments and contributions to sustainability in the form of their working conditions, the local community, and environmental impacts. Finally, studies are documenting how engineers’ develop their sense of professional social responsibility, including their upbringing, college experiences in and out of the classroom, and socialization in the engineering workforce. Some troubling findings are that an individual’s commitment to socially responsible engineering may actually decline over time, perhaps as they begin to separate their technical expertise from social commitments or feel that business interests outweigh broader social responsibilities.

There are still a number of unanswered questions in regards to engineers’ beliefs of their professional social responsibilities, and factors that contribute to shaping these beliefs. More research that involves working engineers is needed. This should include longitudinal studies. It is unclear how the job roles of an engineer – from a freshly graduated junior engineer, to a more senior engineer with supervisory responsibilities – may impact their views of professional social responsibility. It is also unclear how the work setting – public entity, private consultant, working for industry – might be impactful. Job roles should also be explored – research, design, project management, sales, etc. These studies are needed in different countries and cultural settings, as well as in different engineering disciplines. Due to the widespread impacts that engineers have on society and our planet, it is imperative to understand how to better foster social responsibility commitments among engineers.

Acknowledgments

The author acknowledges funding from the National Science Foundation that contributed to data reported and cited in this chapter; Grant Numbers 1158863 and 1540348. Publication of this chapter was funded by the University of Colorado Boulder Libraries Open Access Fund.

Conflict of interest

The author declares that she has no conflict of interest related to this work.

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ENGINEERING IN AN INCREASINGLY COMPLEX SOCIETY 128 CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS The Resilience of the Engineering Manpower System Conclusions 1. Examination of previous crises in the engineering manpower system suggests that it has responded adequately and that calls for a radical expansion or reconstruction of existing arrangements for educating engineers cannot be justified by appeals to past experience. 2. Engineers have in the aggregate adapted rapidly and successfully to sudden changes in the demand for particular engineering specialties. Their ability to do so is directly dependent upon their mastery of the fundamentals of design and their knowledge of the underlying mathematics and science. Recommendations 1. The technical/scientific content of the undergraduate engineering curriculum should emphasize science, mathematics, and engineering design. Technical courses focusing on problems associated with particular engineering specialties should occupy a secondary position in all engineering curricula. 2. When introducing new technologies that render obsolete the knowledge and skills of engineers already employed, companies have an obligation to provide these engineers with educational opportunities that will enable them to remain productive. The continuing education programs offered by many colleges and universities may be helpful in this regard. The Conceptualization and Presentation of Engineering Conclusions 1. The ways in which engineering is presented to and understood by the general public is a matter of vital concern to engineers. 2. The nature of engineering can only be understood in a comprehensive manner if its many links to other sectors of society are described and analyzed in a detailed and careful way.

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Engineers in Britain pp 3–9 Cite as

Introduction: Sociology and Engineering

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Although the reasons are very different in each case, neither engineers nor sociologists have received much appreciation and recognition in Britain in the last third of the twentieth century. Nor do they appear to have had much respect for each other. Many engineers feel that sociology is politically motivated and unscientific; while sociologists impute blame to ‘technologists’ for many of the evils of industrialization such as the destruction of craft skills, exploitation, conspicuous waste, pollution, high levels of military spending, and for being servants of the irresponsibly powerful. This book is written in the belief that the majority of the criticisms, from both sides, are unfair or wrong, and in the hope that practitioners and teachers of engineering will come to see that the study of sociology has something to offer their students.

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Featured Articles

Engineering Ethics and Its Impact on Society

Dr. William Marcy & Jane Rathbun, Texas Tech University

William M. Marcy, PhD, PE

Jane B. Rathbun, BS, MBA

The National Institute for Engineering Ethics

Murdough Center for Engineering Professionalism Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas 79409

Introduction

This article attempts to address three fundamental issues regarding engineering ethics; (1) engineering ethics education, (2) ethical decision making in professional practice and (3) protecting the rights of engineers to make ethical decisions. 

The public has a right to expect ethical conduct of all professionals. The role of engineering and its impact on the health, welfare and safety of the public cannot be overstated. Ethical and professional conduct on the part of engineers requires an often delicate balance of moral reasoning, standards, legal relevance, safety, costs, benefits and risk assessment. [1]

The Association for Practical and Professional Ethics includes engineering ethics as a field of applied ethics that consists of a system of moral principles that apply to the practice of engineering. Engineering ethics sets forth the obligations of engineers to society, to their clients, and to the profession. [2]

Ethical dilemmas faced by practicing engineers are more difficult to resolve than is generally understood, and they are typically multidimensional. They impact a wide range of stakeholders and decisions about ‘doing the right thing’ often fall into a gray area that is ambiguous at best, and catastrophic at worst. It is important to understand the nuances of different approaches to ethical evaluation and decision making. A decision that is the right thing to do for a large majority of stakeholders may have a disproportionately negative impact on a small minority. The ethical principle of ‘utilitarianism’ - which takes the position that the right decision is the one that results in the greatest good for the greatest number of stakeholders- does not necessarily result in the best ethical choice. Alternative ethical principles such as ‘respect for persons’ and ‘virtue ethics’ may yield better ethical decisions when resolving complex dilemmas. Respect for persons recognizes that everyone has the right to ethical treatment regardless of their status in society.  Virtue ethics recognizes that engineers, by virtue of their specialized knowledge, have obligations to protect the health, welfare and safety of the public. A key observation is that ‘intuition’ is often not a reliable method for making ethical decisions. [3]

A serious conflict of interest arises when a design engineer knows the right ethical decision to make but upper management overrides that decision. After exhausting all appeals to upper management, the engineer may be confronted with a significant personal dilemma. The engineer may consider “whistle blowing.” [4]

Even though there are various laws in place to protect whistle blowers, they rarely shield the person involved from potentially catastrophic financial and career risk.  The engineer may be required to make a difficult, and unfair choice between fulfilling their obligations as an engineer and putting their family’s financial well-being at risk. 

“The very societies and institutions which stress ethical values that are grounded in personal responsibility and public accountability have been weak in protecting whistle-blowers from harassment, dismissals, and the expense of law suits. In making this point, Bertrand G. Berube, an engineer, a former GSA regional administrator, a whistle blower, told American Society for Engineering Education members at their 1987 meeting: “If you blow the whistle on a boss, you are likely to be without a job for three to four months and legal fees will be in the range of $30-40 thousand; for blowing the whistle on a government agency, you may expect to be out of work for one to two years and your legal fees may run from $125-$150 thousand.  If you blow the whistle on the political administration in power, you may be off the job for four to seven years and legal fees may be in the $400K­ to $550K range.” [3] [5]

“That is a high price to pay for subsequent recognition by your professional society for your dedication to professionalism, but it, unfortunately, has been the experience of many who chose to exercise their right to blow a whistle when they felt that engineering ethics demanded such drastic action.” [6]

A Brief History of Engineering as a Profession

Engineering ethics has its roots in both engineering and philosophy. Engineering as a profession can trace its roots to the medieval system of training apprentices in skills associated with specific crafts. These craftsmen came together to form “guilds’ whose membership signified not only trusted expertise, but also provided a measure of control over who was permitted to offer their skills, products and services to the public and how those services were to be offered. Eventually, engineering disciplines became sufficiently specialized to develop professional societies and an associated ‘body of knowledge’ was integrated into each discipline. [7]

“To become a member of Craft Guilds in the Middle Ages a person would have to work through three phases to become a member of a Medieval Craft Guild starting as an apprentice.” [8]

  It is worth remembering that before World War II, engineering as a profession in the U.S. was learned primarily through apprenticeship under practicing engineers. As the training of engineers evolved to require more mathematical and scientific knowledge, college education became the necessary pathway to becoming an engineer. Even with a college degree in engineering, a specified period of professional practice under the supervision of licensed professional engineers is required in order for an individual to become licensed to offer engineering services to the public.  [9]

  “Internationally, the first engineering professional societies began in France.  French army engineers organized as the Corps du Genie in 1672, and the French national highway department’s engineers formed the Corps des Ponts et Chaussees in 1716. More than a century later, in England, the Institution of Civil Engineers was founded in 1818.  This was followed in 1847 by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.

Early engineering societies in the North America developed in the following order:

American Society of Civil Engineers, 1852; American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical and Petroleum Engineers, 1871; American Society of Mechanical Engineers, 1880; Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, 1884;American Institute of Chemical Engineers, 1908. 

These groups were subsequently joined by the National Council of State Boards of Engineering, Examiners, American Society for Engineering Education, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, the National Society of Professional Engineers, Canada’s Engineering Institute and a number of other pertinent professional societies.”  [3]

  Evolution of Engineering Ethics as an Academic Subject

Fortunately, the present day engineering curriculum has evolved, as academic accrediting bodies such as the Accrediting Board for Engineering and Technology now require ethics to be taught formally in colleges and universities. [10]. Ethics is also a significant component of the Fundamentals of Engineering Exam. Professional licensing boards now require continuing education in engineering ethics for practicing engineers.  [9]

One difficult aspect to teaching engineering ethics is that by nature, the subject often deals with ambiguous situations that are conceptually difficult for people to understand and assess.  In addition, the decision to do the right thing may necessitate that an engineer takes substantial personal and professional risk. Codes of ethics provide a framework for making decisions, however, they tend to be backward looking, and rapid advances in technology often result in ethical dilemmas that have not been anticipated. In these instances, well educated individuals are often able to reach rationally sound decisions about the right thing to do, however these decisions may be constrained by variables that are in direct conflict with the individual and/or other stakeholders. 

Another difficulty related to teaching engineering ethics is that many engineering faculty may lack practical, real-world experience with the complex ethical dilemmas encountered in professional practice. This lack of experience is often coupled with a reluctance to deal with abstract philosophical concepts and educational institutions may find it difficult to find faculty both willing and competent to teach engineering ethics. 

 Codes of Ethics

  Engineering codes of ethics are the rules of practice that provide a framework for making ethical decisions based on historical case studies where poorly made decisions have been shown to result in negative outcomes. While engineering codes of ethics are similar across disciplines, each may have a slightly different historical perspective. Nevertheless, there are strong similarities between all engineering codes of ethics. [11]

The fundamental cannons and rules of practice found on the National Society of Professional Engineers web site are worth comparing with the codes of ethics developed by individual professional societies. Specifically, all areas and disciplines of engineering share a common doctrine to “hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public.” 

“Engineers, in the fulfillment of their professional duties, shall:

  • Hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public.
  • Perform services only in areas of their competence.
  • Issue public statements only in an objective and truthful manner.
  • Act for each employer or client as faithful agents or trustees.
  • Avoid deceptive acts.
  • Conduct themselves honorably, responsibly, ethically, and lawfully so as to enhance the honor, reputation, and usefulness of the profession.” [1]

  Engineering Ethics and Technological Change

Modern society is dramatically impacted by advances in technology. Current examples include, but are certainly not limited to, self-driving automobiles, electric automobiles, autonomous robots, artificial intelligence, broadband internet, social media, cyber warfare, remotely piloted drones, smart phones, tablet computers, deep sea drilling, ‘fracking’, etc. The list is endless and we see changes on a seemingly daily basis. One aspect of many of the recent and prominently technological changes is a vast array of unintended consequences that the designers never anticipated. Unintended consequences frequently overshadow the anticipated benefits designers of a new technology had in mind. While many unintended consequences may have tremendous positive impacts on society, others may not. Ethical considerations must be included in every step of the design, documentation and deployment process to help anticipate and mitigate negative consequences. One approach to accomplishing this is to conduct a Social Impact Analysis (SIA) as a formal part of the engineering design documentation process. This is a multi-dimensional team effort that is not restricted to engineers. The team should include representatives from all relevant organizational stakeholders in addition to a person whose education, focus and expertise are specific to ethical process evaluation and decision making. 

 Social Impact Analysis

Social Impact Analysis is a forward looking methodology that analyzes the potential ethical consequences of a design, product or concept (DPC). A general outline of the steps required to develop an SIA is as follows: [12]

  • What need is it intended to fill?
  • Who are the parties responsible for creating and deploying the DPC?
  • Who will be held responsible if the design, product or concept fails?
  • Who are the stakeholders, both direct and indirect?
  • What are the risks?
  • What are the costs?
  • What are the benefits?
  • What is the impact on the environment?
  • What can be done to mitigate or eliminate negative consequences?
  • What can be done to maximize positive consequences?
  • Provide a critical discussion for each potential ethical consequence.
  • What can be done to ethically minimize risks to the stakeholders?
  • What can be done to ethically minimize costs to the stakeholders?
  • What can be done to ethically maximize the benefits to the stakeholders?
  • What is the right thing to do regarding each decision?

It is often necessary to make changes to the SIA analysis as the design and deployment process evolves. Most often, the earlier in the design and deployment process that an ethical issue is identified and addressed, the less costly it will be to fix in the long run. A worst case scenario is the requirement to address a safety issue after a project has been deployed. The news media are filled with examples where better ethical decision making during the design and deployment process might have prevented injuries, saved lives, and avoided millions of dollars in institutional liability settlements. 

Changing Roles of the Engineer

Engineers often represent multiple internal and or external stakeholders in a firm, corporation or government agency. They may begin their careers as practicing engineers but may progress into upper level administrative and engineering management positions. At each stage of their careers their loyalties may change. Engineers who are specifically charged with design development are often not the individuals who bear the ultimate responsibility for the profitability of the final design and deployment of a concept or product. It is often the case that a senior engineering manager will have overall profit responsibility but not the technical competence to sign off on work prepared by other design engineers. If a subordinate engineer’s design negatively impacts the profitability of the overall project, a decision may be made by upper engineering management to change a design specification to reduce cost. This cost reduction may negatively impact the health, welfare and safety of the public. Just because it is legal to make these changes to improve profitability doesn’t mean it is ethical.

Engineering Ethics in an International Environment

Many engineers working for U.S. companies practice engineering in a foreign country. It goes without saying that ethical practices outside the United States can be very different. The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) is intended to prevent U.S. companies from bribing foreign officials in order to gain favorable treatment in receiving contracts. Even though huge fines have been levied against companies for violating the FCPA, many companies doing business in a foreign country view the fines as a cost of doing business when the fines are a small percentage of the profits to be made. [13]

There is huge pressure on engineers and engineering managers to do what is necessary to acquire favorable business opportunities in foreign countries. Engineering decisions that would be considered unethical in the U.S. may be perfectly acceptable in a foreign country. Concerns about protecting the health, welfare and safety of the public are often secondary to making a profit in these circumstances. An example, among many, might be as simple as legal leniency regarding protecting the environment, or worse, substandard safety protocols. The ethical consequences of decisions such as these have been devastating in many foreign countries. Hundreds of lives have been lost in plant disasters due to structural failures, chemical disasters and fires in manufacturing facilities. These were the direct result of designs that would be considered unacceptable in the U.S. [14]

Doing the right thing should not change when engineers cross international borders. 

While professional engineers often practice their profession largely out of the public eye, the benefits of their efforts are visible all around us. 

A recent Gallup poll asked what professions people considered most trustworthy. When it comes to ethics and honesty, here’s how the top five professions ranked. Engineers remain among the most trusted professionals. [15]

  • Pharmacists
  • Medical Doctors

  Being an ethical and professional engineer can be very difficult at times. Universities and professional organizations are getting better at providing practicing engineers with the continuing education needed to make sound ethical decisions.  The elephant in the room that no one wants to recognize is the lack of protection for engineers who are asked to put their careers and livelihoods on the line to do the right thing. Protections must be put in place to ensure that engineers are protected under these circumstances. Failing to provide these protections puts everyone at risk.

  [1]  NSPE, "NSPE Code of Ethics for Professional Engineers," 8 May 2015. [Online].   http://www.nspe.org/resources/ethics/code-ethics .

[2]  APPE, "Association for Practical and Professional Ethics," 19-21 Feb 2015. http://squirefoundation.org/appe /   

  [3]  B. W. Baker, "Engineering Ethics: Applications and Responsibilities," in Engineeering Ethics:

Concepts, Viewpoints, Cases and Codes , Lubbock, TX, National Institute for Engineering Ethics, 2008, pp. 49-65.

[4]  US Department of Labor, "Whistle Blower Protection Programs," 8 May 2015. [Online].   http://www.whistleblowers.gov/

[5]  V|Lex, "Bertrand G. Berube, Petitioner, v. General Services Administration, Respondent., 820 F.2d 396 (Fed. Cir. 1987)," 1982.

[6]   http://www.nytimes.com/1988/09/04/us/critic-to-get-money-but-not-job-from-us.html

[7]  R. S. Kirby, Engineering in History, Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1990. 

[8]  Craft Guilds, "Craft Guilds in the Middle Ages," Mar 2015. [Online].  

http://www.lordsandladies.org/craft-guilds-in-the-middle-ages.htm

[9]  NCEES, "The National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying (NCEES)," 2015. http://ncees.org/about-ncees/

[10] ABET, Accrediting Board for Engineering and Technology, http://www.abet.org / , 2015. 

[11] NIEE, "National Institute for Engineering Ethics," 8 May 2015.  

http://www.depts.ttu.edu/murdoughcenter/center/niee/index.ph p .

[12] W. Marcy and R. Burgess, Social Impact Analysis, Lecture ENGR 2392 Engineering Ethics and Its Impact on Society, Lubbock, Texas: Texas Tech University, 2015. 

[13] Investopedia, "Foreign Corrupt Practices Act," 2015. [Online]. Available:

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/foreign-corrupt-practices-act.asp .

[14] J. Burke, "Bangladesh factory fires: fashion industry's latest crisis," 8 Dec 2013. [Online].   http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/08/bangladesh-factory-fires-fashion-latest-crisis .

  [15] L. Jeressi, "What Are the Most Trusted and Least Trusted Professions?" 2 April 2013. htt p://943thepoint.com/what-are-the-most-trusted-and-least-trusted-professions/

 -------------------------

Your reflective comments are invited on some or all of the following. As part of your analysis include information as appropriate on the stakeholders and how they are impacted both positively and negatively.

  • What knowledge and skills are needed to implement sophisticated, appropriate and workable solutions to the complex global problems facing the world today?
  • What interdisciplinary perspectives would help identify innovative and non-obvious solutions?
  • What insights can you articulate, based your culture and other cultures with which you are familiar, to help understand your worldview and enable greater civic engagement?
  • What is your position on the right thing(s) to do?

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December 11, 2014 | William Weir, School of Engineering

The Social Impact of Engineering

A new track within the human rights minor encourages students from a variety of disciplines to consider the social context of engineering advances.

An African woman uses a cell phone. (Shutterstock Photo)

An African woman uses a cell phone. (Shutterstock Photo)

Engineers play a major role in developing cell phones, but what responsibility do they have to consider the origin of the materials the phone is made of? Conversely, can they take credit for how the cell phone can protect African farmers from being swindled?

To address issues such as these, the School of Engineering and the Human Rights Institute have created a track of courses within UConn’s human rights minor that explores the social aspects of engineering, including energy, infrastructure, and water resources management.

“We looked to develop courses that contextualize human rights concepts and theories in an engineering practice,” says Shareen Hertel,  associate professor of political science and human rights. “We on the human rights side found it really advantageous to reach out to the students who were going to do work with serious human rights implications but hadn’t thought about it that way before.”

You hear about all the doodads and gadgets on your cell phone, but then you don’t talk about how the availability of cell phones has allowed people in developing countries to just skip a whole lot of hard-wired infrastructure. — Allison MacKay

Although corporations increasingly are required to consider the social implications of their work, human rights and engineering rarely intersect at universities. Hertel and Allison MacKay, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, make a good case for why that should change. Together, they teach Assessment for Human Rights and Sustainability, one of the first courses offered in the human rights/engineering track.

“If you’re going to build a bridge, and you’re going to have to resettle a tribe of indigenous people because their land is no longer going to be accessible to them,” Hertel says, “that adds implications for cultural rights and their capacity to continue to exist as an indigenous people. It also adds implications for economic rights, because they used to live and work on that land – they don’t know what else to do.”

MacKay says she thinks there’s a misperception that there’s little consideration within the field of engineering for the social consequences of its work. There is, she said, but it doesn’t get talked about much.

“Bettering the social condition is not something we necessarily hear much about,” she says.

“You hear about all the doodads and gadgets on your cell phone, but then you don’t talk about how the availability of cell phones has allowed people in developing countries to just skip a whole lot of hard-wired infrastructure. There’s more cell phones in Africa right now than there are in the United States.”

That allows farmers, for instance, to skip middle men in getting their products to market, and can keep them from getting swindled because now they have access to information about the going rate for their products.

Courses in the human rights/engineering track have included assignments and lectures focusing on everything from biofuels and e-waste to the structural engineering of Bangladeshi factories. They also consider what major corporations are doing – or say they’re doing – to improve social conditions of where they operate.

“Understanding what are the benchmarks for progress and assessment, and how do you measure the quality of the reporting that we’re looking at?” MacKay says. “How do we assess the assessment? That’s a pretty tall order.”

Kazem Kazerounian, dean of the School of Engineering, said he’s pleased the new track of courses has caught the interest of engineering students.

“Engineering is a field that has a huge social impact,” he said, “and by making the human rights minor available to our engineering students, they can now consider these impacts in depth and objectively.”

MacKay and Hertel’s class is one of several in the new track; others focus on supply chains, sustainable business, sustainable energy, public opinion on science and technology, and bioethics.

Developing a range of skills

About two-third of the students in MacKay and Hertel’s class are engineering majors. The rest are mostly from the social sciences and humanities. The mix is new for many of them.

“[Students in the humanities and social sciences have] never sat in a class with an engineering student, maybe not since their first year, in freshmen English or something,” Hertel says. “And they’ve never had to do projects together, so this brings together a multi-skill set approach to look at things like the life cycle of a product, or sourcing challenges.”

That’s important, they say, as these are the kinds of the things that major corporations have to consider now. Doing so requires a multidisciplinary approach, yet it’s rare for people fresh out of school to have that kind of background.

“[Corporations] are really interested in a hiring pool of people who have this multi-skill training,” Hertel says.

Faheem Dalal, a senior majoring in electrical engineering, enrolled in the Assessment for Human Rights and Sustainability class. He and three other students recently presented a report on the ethics of Microsoft’s operations. Before taking the class, Dalal says, he hadn’t given much thought to engineering’s social impact.

“Hopefully this class will help me understand my work, with respect to human rights and environmental awareness,” he says. “After I graduate, I’ll have a better understanding and be able to raise concerns and suggestions.”

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Engineering for Social Impact: Making a Better World

assignment of engineering in society

Every Wednesday this semester, the Center for Socially Engaged Design (C-SED) is bustling with first-year engineering students. Students can either be found with their heads together in small groups working in the C-SED Collaboration Space or peering through matching safety glasses in the C-SED Lab .

Story by Lawryn Fraley 

Taking an Engineering 100 course is a universal experience for all engineering students and is meant to introduce first-years to basic engineering design concepts, principles, and methods; give them contextualized instruction and experience in technical communication; and to acquaint students with important concepts in engineering ethics, professionalism, teamwork, sustainability, and cultural diversity and inclusion. 

Although all sections conform to a set of common learning outcomes, details of the class vary from section to section and are co-developed by a faculty member from Engineering and a faculty member from the Program in Technical Communication. The Engineering 100 section that calls C-SED home, “Engineering for Social Impact: Making a Better World” or ENGR 100.750, is unique.

Diverse engineering teams come up with better and more creative ideas because of the variety of lived experiences the team brings. Knowing this about the industry, Jesse Austin-Breneman, PhD , an Assistant Professor for Mechanical Engineering here at the University of Michigan, sought a partnership with C-SED’s educational team to create a course meant to serve and encourage a diverse cohort of young engineers. 

assignment of engineering in society

Jessica Kennedy (center) and Avinjoy Das discuss an informational sign they will design for a mechanism to secure wheelchairs on a bus. Photo by Marcin Szczepanski

“The current way we engineer is not people-centered. This course is changing that. I want students to believe they can make an impact in society using engineering. We are working on changing the make-up of the engineering community by improving retention and impact of engineering education on diverse designers/makers” says Dr. Austin-Breneman, one of the thought partners behind this particular course. 

How exactly does a required course meant for all engineering students work to achieve such impressive goals? According to the team of instructors and thought partners for the course, this section is different in three fundamental ways: a focus on prototyping within the Socially Engaged Design Process Model; an agnostic approach to making and building; and an appreciation for humor and levity. 

Prototyping within the Socially Engaged Design Process Model

With ENGR 100.750 filling the halls of C-SED each Wednesday, it is no surprise that the course was designed in collaboration with the C-SED staff to incorporate elements of the Socially Engaged Design (SED) Process Model. SED is a design process that incorporates social, cultural, historical, and political contexts into decision-making processes.. Additionally, the model also asks the designer to consider the impacts of their own assumptions, power, privilege, and identities when problem solving.

In the engineering industry, engineers are given problems to solve without being asked to consider the social impact of their decisions. Although engineers consider bodily safety when designing, societal harm is never considered and this discrepancy brings a host of unintended consequences. 

“Engineers are not always taught to ask ‘should I be designing this?’ or ‘is this the actual problem?’. It’s important to understand why you are designing a solution and if it’s addressing the root causes and needs of the people who will be impacted by your solution ” says Shannon Clancy , the Graduate Student Instructor for ENGR 100.750 and one of the C-SED Lab managers. ENGR 100.750 is changing that by encouraging students to reflect on themselves as a factor in the designing process.

This emphasis on reflection is both core to the SED Process Model and the ENGR 100.750 course. There is more of an emphasis on considering the purpose of engineering in general.  Pushing students to contemplate all the potential impacts they could have in the world is more compelling than teaching them how to avoid getting fired.

assignment of engineering in society

Philip Derbesy, Lecturer in the Program in Technical Communication discusses an informational sign students design for a mechanism to secure wheelchairs on a bus. Photo by Marcin Szczepanski

“Teaching that engineering can have a role in social impact is a good lesson for students to learn early and often. Socially Engaged Design goes hand-in-glove with what we are teaching them to be about engineers and communicators. Having a grander view of your work will make you a better engineer, coworker, etc.” says Philip Derbesy, PhD , a Lecturer III for Technical Communication within Michigan Engineering and the communication instructor for this section. 

Approaching making and building agnostically  

This course is a product of a grant Dr. Austin-Breneman received from the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Improving Undergraduate STEM Education (IUSE) grant program along with collaborators at MIT who, as a group, are working on building more inclusive courses and makerspaces for students.

assignment of engineering in society

Jesse Austin-Breneman, Assistant Professor At the Department of Mechanical Engineering at U-M speaks to his students in the C-SED lab. Photo by Marcin Szczepanski

The goal with ENGR 100.750 was to introduce students to different kinds of making early on in their engineering career because within the Mechanical Engineering department, students are  immediately introduced to precision machining as the preferred version of making. In this section, students learn more about low-fidelity prototyping . Low-fidelity (lo-fi) prototyping is a quick and easy way to translate high-level design concepts into tangible and testable artifacts. One of many methods of lo-fi prototyping demonstrated in the course prompt students to start with different types of foam and, using heat guns to manipulate the material, are asked to make something creative in the lab.

The instructional emphasis is not placed on making things perfectly, but simply experimenting with different ideas, techniques, and materials to see how it goes. The instructors encourage students to lean into the fun of building and reflect on the process. 

Dr. Austin-Breneman, who is also an instructor for another Mechanical Engineering course with elements of machinery, knows that advanced forms of prototyping can be intimidating for young engineers because of the added complexity and danger. “I think a lot about how we can improve that experience for students. How can I make something that feeds into [that course] and make them feel more prepared? We are thinking specifically about marginalized identities (gender and race) because they are less likely to feel comfortable making/building in the engineering course.” reflects Dr. Austin-Breneman.

Shannon also remarks, “Making engineering less intimidating is especially important to those without pre-college engineering exposure which is also influenced by gender, race, socio-economic status, and other identities.”

Appreciating humor and levity

assignment of engineering in society

Jesse Austin-Breneman, Assistant Professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering (white shirt) and students Andrea Ouk_Gutierrez (first left) and Ally Buzard chat. Photo by Marcin Szczepanski

Finally, Dr. Austin-Breneman, Dr. Derbesy, and Shannon are making their course a comfortable space using fun and humor. “It is just a lot of fun! Making this more inclusive sometimes looks like empowering them to make a lab playlist to play together while we all work.” says Shannon. 

Dr. Austin-Breneman is intentionally whimsical and less formal while instructing as a way of making himself approachable and the space more welcoming. “Engineering as a discipline and how we train engineers is very rigid. All the exams and coursework are right or wrong and the more ‘right’ you are, the better you are. We are unlearning this. There is no right way to design.” he said. 

With this in mind, the instruction team places more value on practicing engineering skills and methods, taking risks, and reflecting on the process as a whole. They start the semester off intoning to their students that the assignments and the exams are not what is most important,   “what is the product or outcome we are looking for? No, the product is you ! I don’t care about the assignment, I care about you learning from it!” recites Dr. Austin-Breneman. 

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Engineers in Society

This Course Guide has been taken from the most recent presentation of the course. It would be useful for reference purposes but please note that there may be updates for the following presentation.

Introduction

Welcome to ENGG S228 Engineers in Society .

The School of Science and Technology offers ENGG S228 Engineers in Society . The course aims to introduce you to the economic and technology issues which affect the promotion and improvement of industrial activity in Hong Kong. The course supports the development of skills, knowledge and qualities important for professional engineers in the global marketplace.

The course does not attempt to make you an expert in any particular field. For example, the coverage of environmental legislation is such that you learn about the foundation issues for any professional engineer. You should then be able to investigate any particular issues for your own discipline with a good background knowledge. You will not be an environmental legislation expert and it may be necessary to seek professional legal help for specific problems you may encounter in your work.

Engineers in Society is developed with Hong Kong engineers in mind. The local context is introduced through supplementary readings, journal articles, examples and short case studies. The materials make reference to the specific situation in Hong Kong wherever possible and refer to the latest information at the time of writing (mid-1999).

There is no doubt that engineering in Hong Kong and associated operations in mainland China are crucial to Hong Kong's future industrial prosperity. The Hong Kong Government is aware of this despite a strong focus on new information technology (IT) policies and initiatives. The course attempts to present a balanced view of all those with a professional concern for the future of Hong Kong industry.

As Hong Kong manufacturing consists of so many small companies, it is difficult to get an accurate picture of professional engineering practice in Hong Kong. This is significant as this proliferation of small companies means that individual engineers must take more responsibility in their role, as many small companies lack formal policies in important areas such as health and safety and environmental management.

Attempting to establish common practice in engineering is also made more difficult as many Hong Kong based engineering operations adapt to become engineering services companies. These companies are also important for industrial growth, as they are more likely to adopt new IT based strategies in servicing the manufacturing and export needs of their mainland counterparts. All these issues are covered in the course as you investigate and explore what it means to be a professional engineer in Hong Kong.

References to relevant websites are also made, so that you have access to the latest information on each topic. These resources are recommended to you to enhance your studies, but they are not a required part of this course.

This Course Guide is designed to introduce you to the overall course content and the various components of the study units. Read through it as it will help you as you start Unit 1 , as you will already have an overview of what to expect and how the units are presented.

Begin by reviewing the course aims and learning outcomes in the next section. Refer back to them as you complete the course units and check your progress in achieving them.

Course aims and learning outcomes

Course aims

The course ENGG S228 Engineers in Society aims to:

  • Introduce local engineers to the economic and technology issues affecting the promotion and improvement of industrial activity in Hong Kong.
  • Support the development of skills, knowledge and qualities, which are important to professional engineers in the global marketplace.

Course learning outcomes

Upon completion of this course, you should be able to:

  • Analyse the industrial development of Hong Kong and the current shift to a post-industrial service-based economy, driven by new technology.
  • Discuss professional practice as an engineer in Hong Kong, including continuing professional development, and social and ethical considerations.
  • Identify the issues and legislation in safety and health, and environmental and intellectual property law, and their relationship to professional practice in Hong Kong.
  • Explain the elements of the product development process and the role of IT in supporting industrial development.
  • Identify and apply business concepts for small business development.

Course overview

In this section, you are presented with an overview of the content of the course and how it is organized. Although the course is presented as distinct units, under distinct headings, the issues investigated all affect and impact on each other very closely. For example, environmental issues are closely related to safety and health concerns, as well as being closely related to ethical and product liability responsibilities. As another example, the new IT revolution is affecting not only business-to-business communication and trade, but also the manufacturing processes and opportunities for new innovations in design and prototyping.

Where appropriate, the course attempts to highlight connections between topics. Ultimately though, it is your successful attainment of the overall aims and learning outcomes of the course that will enable you to demonstrate an appreciation of the wide ranging issues facing you in your professional engineering career.

ENGG S228 Engineers in Society is a five credit, middle level course. There are no pre-requisite courses that need to be completed. The course consists of five units:

Unit 1 : An introduction to Hong Kong industry

Unit 2 : Professional practice

Unit 3 : The engineer in society

Unit 4 : An introduction to product engineering

Unit 5 : Engineering business development.

Unit 1 presents an overview of the development of Hong Kong industry and explores the shift to a post-industrial society as information technology and services gain importance. The unit introduces the work of the Innovation and Technology Commission and related developments, as Hong Kong positions itself to become a major technology based business centre in the region.

Unit 2 explores the professional environment of engineers in Hong Kong. Ethical and risk issues are explored through case study examples.

Unit 3 concentrates on three specific areas: safety and health, environmental management, and intellectual property. An overview of product liability and consumer law is also included.

Unit 4 introduces the product development process as a tool to encourage innovation in product design, and encourages a flexible approach by engineers. The increasing role of IT in industry is explored from the perspective of design tools used and the improvements to processes which are possible. Quality management and its relevance to Hong Kong is introduced and the unit ends with the product and technology life-cycle, to lead into the next unit.

Unit 5 builds on the product development process introduced in Unit 4 , bringing out the business issues for small technology based start-up companies. The unit introduces the development of a business plan and sources of finance in Hong Kong.

The following chart gives a general overview of the course structure.

Course components

ENGG S228 Engineers in Society will be delivered primarily as five print based units and this Course Guide . There will be no course textbooks, but external readings will be included where they are required. All the readings are provided as print copies included with each of the units. Many of these are available on the Internet and the web addresses are included if you wish to access them this way. They will also be available through a list of hyperlinks on a homepage for the course.

Although the course includes external references and highlights current issues, it is part of your responsibility as a professional engineer to keep up to date. This is important not only in your specific discipline, but also in society as a whole. For example, intellectual property and environmental legislation are developing rapidly in both Hong Kong and on the mainland. It is important that you keep up to date to ensure that you are addressing your responsibilities to society within your work, as well as the needs of your employer.

To support you in your studies, the course integrates a number of components throughout all the units. Before exploring each of them, it is important that you appreciate that the study units lead the way.

Study units lead the way

As with most HKMU courses, study units direct your studies. They are designed to introduce and review each topic in a way that helps you learn the ideas and concepts most appropriately.

This means that you should not skip readings or activities to progress further or faster. Frequently, the study notes following an activity or reading will refer directly to it and the ideas and concepts it covers. You will also find that each unit builds on the previous one and may often refer back to materials in earlier units. Remember though, you are not required to access the websites included in the reference sites at the end of most major parts of the units.

Activities are included within the study notes to help you think in more detail about the topics covered. The activities are particularly focused towards applying what is covered to your own organization, or one with which you are familiar. Immediately following each activity, feedback is given on how you might have responded. More detailed feedback may be referenced in the back of the unit. Some activities build on the previous ones, so keep and label any notes you make for each of them as you go.

Case examples

Case examples are normally short cases integrated into the topic notes to highlight specific issues or practices in industry.

Readings are integrated with the study notes. These enable you to look at an issue in more depth or to see an alternative view. All the readings are numbered and print copies are included with each unit. In addition, where a reading is also available online, a World Wide Web address is included.

Specifically, the course integrates a number of excerpts of an interview with Dr Raymond Ho, the Legislative Councillor for the Engineering Functional Constituency in Hong Kong. This interview — conducted specifically for use on ENGG S228 — attempts to highlight current issues to balance government views and policies.

Self tests are provided at the end of each unit. Feedback on these questions is included at the end of the unit. They are an important tool to help you check your progress. Spend some time on them and review any topics in the units where you find difficulty answering questions.

References and further reading

References and further reading includes citations for all the quotes and readings used in the unit. Additional texts and website resources covering the unit topics are identified for further research.

Reference sites

Reference sites are included at the end of each major part of the units. They are only included for further reference and accessing them is not a required part of the course. A course homepage will be made available that provides a list of hyperlinks to websites which are referred to in the course units.

Tutorial support

A total of ten hours of tutorials are included in this course, based on two hours for each of the five course units:

Tutorials will be based on the major course units and tutors may also introduce further explanations, examples and readings. In addition, surgeries may be used as required and industry presented seminars will also be scheduled as part of school activities for a range of courses.

Course assessment

The overall assessment strategy is based on assignments and an end of course examination. Each will count for 50% of the final award.

Assignments

There are two assignments in the course.

  • This assignment will focus on the role of the engineer in the growth and improvement of Hong Kong industry as we move towards a post-industrial society driven and supported by information technology ( Units 1 and 2 ).
  • This assignment will involve identifying the organizations and bodies for promoting professional practice in Hong Kong and the role they would play in the case scenario presented ( Unit 3 ). The assignment will also involve a review and evaluation of the quality management of your company, or one with which you are familiar. They will focus on the strategies for quality management and why quality management is important to your company in effectively competing in the global marketplace ( Unit 4 and 5 ).

Examination

The final examination will be three hours in duration, and will account for 50% of the overall course credit. Questions will cover all five units of the course and there will be an emphasis on questions related to content which is not covered in the assignments.

About the developers of this course

Keith Pretty ( Units 1-5 )

Keith Pretty earned his BSc (Hons) in Engineering Product Design from South Bank University (1987) and his MBA from Dorset Business School (1992). While teaching at Bournemouth University he developed and directed a range of innovative degree courses which integrate technical, design and business disciplines.

With the onset of the Internet revolution, Keith adapted and developed his computer design and programming skills to the creation of web-based applications and teaching materials. Keith lives and works in Hong Kong and is the managing director of Learning Connections, which develops educational multimedia resources for Hong Kong universities.

Keith is currently studying for a doctorate in education (EdD) at Durham University, in the UK, where his research focuses on the integration of university online learning networks with electronic commerce systems.

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Wade Hsu Wins IEEE Photonics Society’s 2024 Young Investigator Award

Recognized for ‘seminal work on bound states in the continuum in optics, and for breakthroughs in computational electromagnetics and imaging.’.

Image of Chia Wei "Wade" Hsu, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, who is the recipient of the 2024 Young Investigator Award form the Institute of Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Photonics Society.

Chia Wei “Wade” Hsu, winner of the IEEE Photonics Society’s Young Investigator Award for 2024. (USC Viterbi Photo)

Chia Wei “Wade” Hsu , an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at the USC Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, is the recipient of the 2024 Young Investigator Award from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Photonics Society.

The Society recognized Hsu for his “seminal work on bound states in the continuum in optics and for breakthroughs in computational electromagnetics and imaging,” making him the first person from USC to receive this honor. Read more about the award and see the past winners .

The award citation refers to three distinct contributions: The first was made during his PhD work, when Hsu discovered that light could be perfectly confined even in an open system. That discovery, published in Nature in 2013 , launched the study of “bound states in the continuum” in optics into an active research area.

In 2022, Hsu proposed a new numerical method that can solve Maxwell’s equations much faster, by several orders of magnitude. This breakthrough, published in Nature Computational Science , is the second contribution recognized by the IEEE Photonics Society.

The third contribution refers to his current work, in which Hsu is developing a method to see through opaque structures like skin and bone, with micron-scale resolution, using digital reconstruction and digital wavefront correction. Hsu is collaborating with Brian Applegate and John Oghalai at the Keck School of Medicine of USC to apply this method to image the human cochlea, and they were recently awarded the Nemirovsky Engineering and Medicine Opportunity (NEMO) Prize to carry out this study.

The IEEE Photonics Society Young Investigator Award recognizes researchers who have made “outstanding technical contributions to photonics” prior to their 35th birthday. Hsu will officially receive the award at the Conference on Lasers and Electro-optics (CLEO) held May 5-10 in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Published on February 22nd, 2024

Last updated on February 22nd, 2024

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Nagarajah received a $25,000 prize to advance the device, which prevents plastic debris from flowing through neighborhood drainage systems and polluting the oceans. Photo/Lauren Silberman.

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By Lauren Goode

Tech Job Interviews Are Out of Control

A woman holding a laptop getting ready to jump through hoops of fire

In 2022, feeling burned out by the pandemic and a five-year sprint at a cloud storage company, Catherine decided it was time for a break.

Catherine, who uses the pronouns they/them and asked that their full name be withheld due to the sensitive nature of job hunting, had adequate savings and a partner with health insurance. So Catherine spent five months hiking the 2,650 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail. By the end of 2023, they were ready to look for another software engineering job. But the hunt for work proved harder than the hike.

In one recent interview, Catherine was given a take-home assignment: Build a desktop app from scratch, connect it to a mock-up of a backend system, and provide extensive documentation of each step. After spending the entire day coding and still not completing the task, they withdrew their job application. “If the company had asked me to add a new feature to an app in that time frame, that would have made more sense,” Catherine says. “I thought, maybe this is a sign.”

It was a sign—of how the tech industry has made technical interviews more punishing, part of a wider pullback from Silicon Valley’s famously coder-friendly culture. After pandemic hiring sprees, tech companies reversed course in 2022 as interest rates began to rise, making sweeping layoffs and cuts to office perks. Now managers have turned the hiring process for technical roles into more of a gauntlet. Long gone are the days of Google HR managers prompting candidates with clever brain teasers and Silicon Valley engineers easily landing jobs with six-figure starting salaries. Nearly a dozen engineers, hiring managers, and entrepreneurs who spoke with WIRED describe an environment in which technical job applicants are being put through the wringer. Take-home coding tests used to be rare, deployed only if an employer needed to be further convinced. Now interviewees are regularly given projects described as requiring just two to three hours that instead take days of work.

Live-coding exercises are also more intense, industry insiders say. One job seeker described an experience where an engineering manager said during an interview, “OK, we’re going to build a To Do List app right now,” a process that might normally take weeks.

Emails reviewed by WIRED showed that in one interview for an engineering role at Netflix, a technical recruiter requested that a job candidate submit a three-page project evaluation within 48 hours—all before the first round of interviews. A Netflix spokesperson said the process is different for each role and otherwise declined to comment. A similar email at Snap outlined a six-part interview process for a potential engineering candidate, with each part lasting an hour. A company spokesperson says its interview process hasn’t changed as a result of labor market changes.

“The balance of power has shifted back to employers, which has resulted in hiring getting tougher,” says Laszlo Bock, who ran hiring at Google as SVP of people operations for 10 years and is now an adviser at the venture capital firm General Catalyst.

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Bock says the shift is partly due to mass layoffs; employers are more able to flex their muscles in a tighter labor market. But there’s also a broader psychological shift. “After years of tech workers being pampered, of ‘bring your whole selves to work’ and ‘work from anywhere,’ executives are now overcompensating in the other direction,” he says.

The upshot for job-seeking coders is confusion, culture shock, and hours of work done for free. Buzz Andersen, who has held engineering roles at Apple, Square, and Tumblr, recently hit the job market again. He noted on Threads last month, “Tech industry job interviews have, of late, reached a new level of absurdity.”

Last year an estimated 260,000 workers were let go across 1,189 tech companies, according to a live-update layoff tracker called Layoffs.fyi . And the layoffs have continued into 2024, forcing a glut of talent into an already competitive market. An estimated 41,000 tech workers have been laid off so far this year.

Of course, not all of the tech workers losing their jobs are engineers. Engineers are often still seen as a privileged class within tech companies and the wider economy. Typically they’re the highest-paying class of workers below the C-suite in tech companies. Aline Lerner, who runs a popular interviewing practice platform called Interviewing.io, believes that the total number of engineering layoffs last year was closer to 15,000.

Data from Interviewing.io backs up job seekers’ claims that the bar for technical interviewing has gotten quantifiably higher. Interviewing.io connects people willing to pay $225 or more for interview practice with experienced hiring managers. These managers conduct mock interviews and then provide detailed feedback. Over the past eight years Lerner’s company has recorded thousands of grades from these encounters. Interview subjects are graded not just on their technical interviews, but also behavioral interviews, which focus on problem-solving and communication.

Since 2022, scoring a “thumbs up” on a technical interview has gotten more difficult by an estimated 22 percent, Lerner says. “It’s a very very clear trend,” she says. “And it’s not just interviews at a few Big Tech companies. It’s happening across many tech companies.”

On the app Blind, an anonymous gossip app where the truth might be elastic but industry trends often emerge, some tech workers say interviews feel “practically impossible.” One user wrote in early February that the bar for getting hired at one of the Big Tech firms is “two LeetCode medium/hard [tests] within 40 minutes and most of my friends failed,” referring to an oft-used online programming platform.

Another worker complained on Blind that preparing for LeetCode questions requires “hundreds of hours” of preparation: “Why are we expected to do the coding Olympics for every company that wants to interview you?” An engineer who became a manager at Dropbox and is now a director in the telecom industry tells WIRED that in his own past job hunting experience, he felt compelled to collect and write over 100 pages of coding material and potential questions before interviews.

For some people trying to hire tech talent, thoroughly probing potential hires can feel like a necessity no matter what the labor market looks like. “Each hire is crucial to us. We only have 14 people,” says Jessica Powell, a former Googler who is now CEO of AI startup AudioShake .

But for candidates being asked to prove their coding prowess over and over again in interviews, the process can start to feel like it’s missing the point. “The analogy I use is, if you were trying to hire a brain surgeon—not that what we’re doing is brain surgery—you would want someone who is a proven specialist in their field,” says Buzz Andersen. “You wouldn’t spend your interview time quizzing someone on the chemistry they studied in their first year of college.”

Tech hiring—like so much else in the industry—has also been transformed by the recent generative AI boom. People who specialize in the field are in more demand than ever, but sometimes at the expense of engineers who aren’t as skilled in this area. AI techniques are increasingly being applied to areas where machine learning wasn’t previously relevant.

“Data scientists now get hired to do much of the work that in the past engineers were hired to do, in part because there’s real overlap in the skill sets,” Bock, the former Google SVP, says.

Unsurprisingly, job seekers are now using AI to turbocharge their search for work —and even cheat in interviews. Last fall, a TikTok video with over 100,000 likes showcased how a job candidate with “zero knowledge using AI” could read directly from a ChatGPT-generated script during a video interview for an engineering role. In another video posted on YouTube , a programmer shows off a ChatGPT browser extension that helps someone quickly respond to an interview question about whether Javascript is a single-threaded language or a multi-threaded one.

These hacks could force tech companies to reevaluate their interview processes, Lerner of Interviewing.io says. The team at Interviewing.io published the results of an experiment they recently conducted on interviewees using ChatGPT during live coding tests. The mock interviewers were not told that ChatGPT would be used, while the interview subjects were given explicit instructions to use ChatGPT for sets of LeetCode questions, as well as some custom questions. (Interviewing.io does not record video during its mock interviews, for privacy reasons.)

Out of 32 interviews included in the final results, not a single person on the interviewing end was able to suss out that the person on the other end was using ChatGPT to “cheat.”

Lerner hopes the threat of AI will help force companies to rethink their approach to interviewing. “A lot of these tech companies are just reusing the same tactics over and over, and it’s gotten so ridiculous. It’s bad for the industry,” she says. “I think with the advent of ChatGPT, companies are going to have to move away from that and start asking more meaningful questions.”

Andersen, who most recently worked at a book club app called Fable, just landed a new job. He took a risk during his interview process and declined when the company asked him to complete tests on Coderpad, a testing platform like LeetCode. Fortunately, his new company was willing to do a face-to-face assessment with his new boss.

Catherine, the PCT hiker, has also decided they’re not prepared to waste time on burdensome interview assessments. Instead, they’re focusing on small companies that they think from the outset will be better suited to their skills. The competition for high-paying engineering jobs at “FAANG”-level companies is just too great. “I’ve been filtering really hard for smaller companies where the culture seemed good,” Catherine says.

They haven’t landed their next job yet, but have interviewed at three places. So far, they say, “the vibes are surprisingly good.”

WIRED has teamed up with Jobbio to create WIRED Hired , a dedicated career marketplace for WIRED readers. Companies who want to advertise their jobs can visit WIRED Hired to post open roles, while anyone can search and apply for thousands of career opportunities. Jobbio is not involved with this story or any editorial content.

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Region 4 NSBE members at the conference

Celebrating 50 years of the National Society of Black Engineers

Uc's nsbe chapter is one of nearly 100 in region four.

headshot of Lindsey Osterfeld

For half a century, the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) has committed to increasing the number of culturally responsible Black engineers who excel academically, succeed professionally and positively impact the community. 

UC's NSBE chapter is one of nearly 100 chapters in region 4. Christopher Boles, left, and another chapter member hold up fours to signify this. Photo/Provided

In the early 1970's a group of six Purdue engineering students, dubbed the "Chicago Six," created the first chapter of what was then called the Society of Black Engineers. In 1975, after a unanimous vote by the Purdue students and nearly 50 more from other accredited engineering schools, The National Society of Black Engineers was born. 

"NSBE creates a welcoming environment for minority and Black students in engineering," said Christopher Boles, a doctoral student at the University of Cincinnati and the NSBE chapter vice president. "We focus on being together, working together and uplifting one another as well as reaching out to the community." 

UC's chapter is one of more than 600 national and global chapters; there are more than 24,000 active NSBE members around the world. Each year, NSBE members and industry partners come together for annual regional and national conferences. 

I will never forget attending my first NSBE National Convention. It was my first time attending an event with tens of thousands of Black engineers and I was shell shocked.

Deborah Cole-Taylor UC NSBE chapter president

The conferences provide opportunities for professional development, including a career fair wherein hundreds of companies attend. Students can network with employers, sometimes landing co-op or full-time jobs. Additionally, the conferences are a tangible representation of the community NSBE provides for Black engineers. 

"I will never forget attending my first NSBE National Convention," said Deborah Cole-Taylor, chemical engineering student and president of the UC NSBE chapter. "It was my first time attending a convention with tens of thousands of Black engineers and I was shell shocked. I came back from the convention with unforgettable memories I still reflect on today." 

NSBE's community is reminiscent of a family for its members. Cole-Taylor shared that her involvement with the organization was driven by the desire to find a community of people on campus who could relate to her experiences as a Black person, and woman, in engineering. NSBE provided that for her. 

"Engineering is challenging by itself, but holding these identities presents me with obstacles that many of our counterparts within the college and the field do not face," Cole-Taylor said.

Deborah Cole-Taylor (right) pictured with UC alumnus and founding member of UC NSBE, Keith Boswell. Photo/UC Alumni Association

UC NSBE students attend regional and national conventions each year. (Cole-Taylor pictured second from back left and Boles pictured far right). Photo/Provided

Nationwide, NSBE is working to increase the number of Black students that earn bachelor's degrees in engineering to 10,000, annually, by 2025. To do this, they are organizing outreach programs with pre-collegiate initiative (K-12) students and their families. Each year, UC's chapter hosts several events for Cincinnati-area schools to inspire students to get interested in STEM. 

One of the biggest annual events UC hosts is Engineer for a Day. NSBE members work with students on science experiments and demonstrations like the egg drop and the chemistry behind creating slime to show them what it's like to be an engineer. While they are doing these activities, their parents and guardians attend a panel hosted by current UC and CEAS students for a Q&A session about their experiences, the resources available and what it might look like here for their student. 

NSBE is magic. I am so thankful for this network because it's more like family.

Whitney Gaskins, PhD CEAS Associate Dean

Whitney Gaskins (left), CEAS associate dean, has been involved with NSBE since she was an undergraduate student here at UC. She is pictured with founding member of UC NSBE, Keith Boswell. Photo/UC Alumni Association

NSBE works to form this connection with students before they enter college, and once it's made, it lasts well beyond graduation day. Many can testify to that. For Boles, he was introduced to NSBE during his undergraduate program, and a connection within the organization inspired him to pursue his doctoral degree, leading him to UC. For CEAS Associate Dean Whitney Gaskins, NSBE created a foundation for her career. 

A unique element of the NSBE organization is that it is wholly student run on a campus, regional and national level. The policies and direction of NSBE are managed by engineering students. For instance, Gaskins shares that at the age of 21, she was managing a multimillion-dollar budget, planning conferences for thousands of people, and interacting with hundreds of companies in her role on the NSBE National Executive Board. 

The University of Cincinnati has a strong history related to NSBE. For instance, one of the founding members of the chapter, Keith Boswell , was present at the inaugural NSBE conference in 1975 and the following year was named the first Region Four Chairperson. 

"NSBE is magic," Gaskins said. "I am so thankful for this network because it's more like family." 

For 50 years, the organization has been uplifting, encouraging and inspiring Black engineers and welcoming new members with open arms. 

At NSBE's annual Engineer for a Day event, local K-12 students complete engineering activities with NSBE members. Photo/Provided

NSBE students connect with K-12 students through outreach activities. Photo/Provided

Featured image at top: NSBE region four members at the fall regional conference. Keith Boswell (center), Deborah Cole-Taylor (left center) and Christopher Boles (right center) are pictured. Photo/Provided

  • Student Experience
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February 21, 2024

For half a century, the National Society of Black Engineers has committed to increasing the number of culturally responsible Black engineers who excel academically, succeed professionally and positively impact the community. UC's chapter is one of more than 600 global chapters. The organization celebrates 50 years.

Second-year student works to advance medical technology and campus outreach

February 23, 2024

“There is no point of waiting to be an upperclassman to try to take on a leadership role.” These are the words of self-given advice that have guided University of Cincinnati student Adolphus Addison – advice that he also hopes to extend towards fellow young engineers. Currently in his second year studying biomedical engineering at UC’s College of Engineering and Applied Science, Addison has already amassed an impressive list of accomplishments.

Biomedical engineer driven to create a better life for her sister

March 29, 2023

Dominique Tanner, a biomedical engineering doctoral candidate at the University of Cincinnati, finds motivation from her sister. Diagnosed with epilepsy at just a few months old, her sister has experienced seizures all her life. Tanner became determined to learn about the condition and dedicated herself to a career in helping her sister and others like her. She is the second black woman to receive a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering at UC and was named Graduate Student Engineer of the Month by the College of Engineering and Applied Science.

Graduate students win IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society awards

by TJ Triolo | Feb 22, 2024 | Awards , News

Cecilio Obeso and Idban Alamzadeh's portraits on a gold background

Two electrical engineering graduate students in the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University received awards from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Antennas and Propagation Society , or IEEE AP-S. Doctoral student Idban Alamzadeh received a 2023 Doctoral Research Grant from the organization, and master’s degree student Cecilio Obeso received a 2023 Eugene F. Knott Pre-Doctoral Research Grant.

The awards are given by the IEEE AP-S to encourage students to pursue careers in electromagnetics, antenna engineering and microwave circuits. Each year, about 10 research grants are given to doctoral students, while about six Knott grants are given to undergraduate and master’s degree students.

Alamzadeh’s project, “Smart Communication Links using Hybrid Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces,” looks to improve radio wave propagations in wireless channels. Wireless communication signals are frequently weakened by objects blocking their paths, resulting in connection losses and data outages. Alamzadeh plans to use reconfigurable metasurfaces made of electromagnetic metamaterials that can redirect the wireless signals to circumvent the blockage, improving wireless data links.

To ensure maximum transmission strength in dynamic radio environments, the metasurfaces must be able to reconfigure based on what they can sense from the surrounding environment and adjust signal direction accordingly. Alamzadeh aims to solve this need.

“IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society Doctoral Research Grants are awarded to only a select few young professionals around the world,” he says. “Being among these few winners is a great achievement in my career. I am both humbled and excited for this award.”

For Obeso’s award, he seeks to develop a portable microwave imaging system for nondestructive evaluation of objects. Plans for the imaging system include making it compact, lightweight, affordable and high-resolution.

Obeso plans to investigate the utility of microwave imaging in monitoring Southwest plants’ moisture levels. Gauging the moisture content provides a look at vegetation health without needing to destroy it by cutting the plants open.

Obeso says receiving his grant is encouraging for his academic career.

“Receiving recognition from such a prestigious institution acknowledges the quality and potential of my research work in the field of antennas and propagation,” he says. “Ultimately, winning this grant is a fantastic boon to my bourgeoning career in research.”

Mohammadreza Imani , an assistant professor of electrical engineering in the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering , mentors both students. Imani, a faculty member in the School of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering , part of the Fulton Schools, praised his students as deserving of their awards.

“I am glad their hard work has been rewarded,” he says. “It is also encouraging that our lab’s research efforts have been noticed by the community.”

ECEE Highlights

Read more engineering stories in Full Circle

Learn more about the School of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering

Learn more about the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering

IMAGES

  1. Engineering-in-society.pdf

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  2. Engineering in Society DCC50232

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  3. What is the role of an engineer in society?

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  5. Assignment 1 Engineer In Society

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COMMENTS

  1. PDF Engineering in Society

    engineering to be formulaic problem solving - analysing a problem to come to a known, single solution. Many of the problems facing society and engineering today are new and complex. As a society we have never before faced a problem like human-induced climate change. Never before have we had the capacity to produce and share so much data about our

  2. Engineering in Society: Why Engineers are Important in the ...

    Engineering in Society: Why Engineers are Important in the Modern World Friday, November 27, 2020 8:56 AM UTC Engineers are curious-minded people focused on solving problems and finding...

  3. Engineering Design and Society

    Engineering is a deliberate, purposive activity of individuals or groups seeking their objectives. Social phenomenon, on the other hand, is conceptualized at an aggregated level as a consequence of individual behavior. Engineering is a practice; society is the result of many such practices.

  4. 2.4: The Global and Societal Impact of Engineering

    2.4: The Global and Societal Impact of Engineering. Engineering has had an impact on all aspects of society. Look around you and notice all of the things that have been made by humans. Through designing, manufacturing, testing, or selling, an engineer probably had something to do with most of these human-made items.

  5. Professional Social Responsibility in Engineering

    2. Social responsibilities of the engineering profession. The engineering profession has a variety of ethical responsibilities to society and the environment. This field of inquiry has recently been termed macroethics [ 1 ]. But these professional social responsibilities may be in tension with the business side of engineering [ 2 ].

  6. (PDF) The Social and Environmental Impact of Engineering Solutions

    The nine papers that adopt the definition from Our Common Future [5,7, 20, 44,49,54,59,67,79] and the three that mention Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals [3,5,22] can be considered...

  7. PDF The Relationship Between Engineers and Society: is it currently

    This two-way process, the mutual interaction between technology and society, can be viewed as a form of supply-and-demand relationship. Society makes demands, in the form of needs and desires; technology provides solutions, and society provides feedback in the form of the degree of acceptance of these solutions.

  8. Conclusions

    Chapter: Conclusions. Suggested Citation: "Conclusions." National Research Council. 1985. Engineering in Society. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/586. Below is the uncorrected machine-read text of this chapter, intended to provide our own search engines and external engines with highly rich, chapter-representative ...

  9. PDF 1 Introduction: Sociology and Engineering

    limited British view of engineering education's potential. Our Audience This book is intended for use by engineering and comparable under­ graduates, but we hope it will also attract a wider readership amongst practising engineers, sociologists with an interest in engineers and engineering, and all those interested in Britain and in engineering -

  10. (PDF) Student Views on their Role in Society as an Engineer and

    Alexandra Kulich Madeline Polmear Vrije Universiteit Brussel It is important that engineering and computing students are educated to understand the ethical expectations of the profession and to...

  11. Why Engineers are Becoming Increasingly Important

    Engineering has, in and of itself, made significant contributions to this aspect of society. From the basic teaching of the principles of engineering, the products of engineering are all around ...

  12. Engineering Ethics and Its Impact on Society

    Introduction. This article attempts to address three fundamental issues regarding engineering ethics; (1) engineering ethics education, (2) ethical decision making in professional practice and (3) protecting the rights of engineers to make ethical decisions. The public has a right to expect ethical conduct of all professionals.

  13. Assignment Engineering In Society

    Discuss the roles of engineering in society and the duties of maintaining health and safety in the workplace (A2, PLO6); Justify the importance of ethical issues and rules of conduct for the profession in civil engineering associated with contemporary technology and environmental protection in civil engineering (A3, PLO8); Display skills of self...

  14. Engineering in Society

    Engineering in Society. Course Code: ENGI 1020. Academic Year: 2024-2025. This course is a broad-based introduction to the sociotechnical complexities of engineering practice. Drawing examples from multiple disciplines of engineering, students learn the impact of engineering decisions on society as well the societal factors that influence ...

  15. PDF ENGINEERING AND SOCIETY

    As you become practicing engineers at work and solid citizens in the community, you will be asked to contribute your engineering skills and your innovative drive to help solve the substantive problems facing our society. This assignment will introduce our class to diverse contemporary problems where engineers can make a difference.

  16. The Social Impact of Engineering

    The Social Impact of Engineering. A new track within the human rights minor encourages students from a variety of disciplines to consider the social context of engineering advances. An African woman uses a cell phone. (Shutterstock Photo) A woman uses a cell phone in South Africa. Cell phones have enabled African farmers to skip the middle man ...

  17. Engineering for Social Impact: Making a Better World

    Taking an Engineering 100 course is a universal experience for all engineering students and is meant to introduce first-years to basic engineering design concepts, principles, and methods; give them contextualized instruction and experience in technical communication; and to acquaint students with important concepts in engineering ethics, professionalism, teamwork, sustainability, and cultural ...

  18. Engineers in Society

    Engineers in Society back Introduction Course aims and learning outcomes Course overview Course components Tutorial support Course assessment About the developers of this course

  19. Engineering in Society

    Engineering in Society; Engineering in Society (DCC50232) 24 24 documents. 0 0 questions 8 8 students. Follow this course Chat. Lecture notes. Date Rating. year. Ratings. Presentation Meter OPC (1 Fasa) TT05-06. ... Reverse engineering assignment notes and. 45 pages 2021/2022 None. 2021/2022 None. Save. Other. Date Rating. year.

  20. Wade Hsu Wins IEEE Photonics Society's 2024 Young Investigator Award

    Chia Wei "Wade" Hsu, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at the USC Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, is the recipient of the 2024 Young Investigator Award from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Photonics Society.. The Society recognized Hsu for his "seminal work on bound states in the continuum in optics ...

  21. Second-year student works to advance medical technology and campus

    For half a century, the National Society of Black Engineers has committed to increasing the number of culturally responsible Black engineers who excel academically, succeed professionally and positively impact the community. UC's chapter is one of more than 600 global chapters. The organization celebrates 50 years.

  22. Tech Job Interviews Are Out of Control

    Tech companies are famous for coddling their workers, but after mass layoffs the industry's culture has shifted. Engineers say that getting hired can require days of work on unpaid assignments. In ...

  23. 'I'm proud of being a job hopper': Seattle engineer's post about

    "Having hired over 500 engineers personally in my career, if your resume came across my list, I would definitely pass." "There isn't one *right* approach. Most people over-index on ...

  24. Celebrating 50 years of National Society of Black Engineers

    In the early 1970's a group of six Purdue engineering students, dubbed the "Chicago Six," created the first chapter of what was then called the Society of Black Engineers. In 1975, after a unanimous vote by the Purdue students and nearly 50 more from other accredited engineering schools, The National Society of Black Engineers was born.

  25. Assignment Eng of Society

    CIVIL ENGINEERING DEPARTMENT POLITECHNIC KOTA KINABALU SESSION 1: 2021/ COURSE CODE: DCC. COURSE NAME: ENGINEERING IN SOCIETY. ASSESSMENT: ASSIGNMENT TOPIC: 1 (CLO 1). COURSE SECTION: DKA5A / DKA5B / DKA5C. NAME COURSE COORDINATOR: Related CLOs CLO 1 Discuss the roles of engineering in society and the duties ofmaintaining health and safety in the workplace (A2, PLO6); CLO 2 Justify the ...

  26. Graduate students win IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society awards

    Two electrical engineering graduate students in the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University received awards from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Antennas and Propagation Society, or IEEE AP-S. Doctoral student Idban Alamzadeh received a 2023 Doctoral Research Grant from the organization, and master's degree student Cecilio Obeso received a 2023 ...

  27. Assignment 2 Engineers IN Society

    campus unikl british malaysian institute course name engineers in society course code bkb course leader mohd. khairil rahmat course lecturer(s) mohd. khairil rahmat year/semester july 2021 [flexi] assessment details title/name assignment 2 weightage 20% course learning outcome(s) clo 1: identify ethical and professionalism issues in engineering.

  28. 179199204 Lecture 1 Role of Engineer in Society 001 pdf

    Engineering is identified as the profession in which knowledge of mathematical and natural sciences gained by study, experience, and practice is applied with judgement to develop ways to utilize, economically, materials and forces of nature for the benefit of mankind.

  29. Biomedical Engineering Society Engineer's Got Talent Feb. 22

    The Biomedical Engineering Society is putting on Engineer's Got Talent, a student-run talent show, at Faulkner Performing Arts Center on Feb. 22. Doors open at 6:30 p.m., and the show starts at 7 p.m. All students are encouraged to sign up to perform using the QR code listed on the flyer! All students are invited to attend free of charge.