Essays

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        The ideal engineering curriculum would probably include a first-year Introduction to the Profession in which students would learn something about the history, organization, and practice of engineering. Such a course would be a natural place to introduce students to the profession's code of ethics, to a general approach to analyzing ethics problems, and to a number of classic problems. During the second and third years, professors teaching analytic courses could do enough ethics in their courses to be sure students not only do not forget the first-year's lessons but also get used to looking for ethical issues in everything they do. Different courses might emphasize different ethical concerns to avoid the impression that there is not much variety in engineering's ethical problems. The senior design course should give students the opportunity to bring together what they have learned over three years in an environment much more like that of actual practice. For example, they might, as part of their final written report, be asked to identify all the ethical problems that came during the design project, explaining how they resolved each....

        "Ethics" (in this third sense) is not the plural of "ethic". An ethic, a way of living, may or may not be moral. Ethics (in the third sense) is always moral in at least two senses. First, it is moral because, by definition, ethics is "morally permissible", moral in the weak sense of "not immoral". But ethics is also always moral in a stronger sense, "immoral not to". The ethics of a group are always morally binding on its members (even though not morally binding on ordinary moral agents). The members of the group cannot act unethically without doing something morally wrong....

        Many professors and students resist adopting collaborative and cooperative learning methods, not only because of lack of familiarity with these methods. Professors worry that they might lose control of a class, and that they would cover less material. Students fear that their grades would be jeopardized by weak performers in their groups, and that they would learn less from peers than from the professor. In a comprehensive guide to cooperative learning, Millis and Cottell [1998] address these concerns and argue that cooperative learning can help students develop academic and interpersonal skills better than traditional teaching...

        In real life, solving ethical problems requires collaboration between different kinds of professionals. The combination of different experiences and values can lead to better, more informed decisions. Engineers know that every large project——designing a passenger aircraft, constructing an oil refinery, manufacturing an automobile——requires a team of engineers with different specializations: mechanical engineers, electrical engineers, materials engineers, computer engineers, etc. Broader professional collaborations occur in other settings. In hospitals, patient care teams comprise social workers, physical therapists, nurses, and physicians. In environmental protection agencies, the drafting of regulations requires lawyers, civil engineers, and soil chemists. Physicians and lawyers, traditionally solo practitioners, are now employed in large medical clinics and law firms...

        Should you have any desire of review many other ethical issues, these links below link to many professional ethical society.

APS (American Professional Society)

ASCE (American Society of Civil Engineers)

ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers)

IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers)

NAFTA Links

NSPE (National Society of Professional Engineers)

NSPE (Professional Society for Sales and Marketing)

The ethical aspects of computing have gained increasing attention at the professional level of education in universities. As a result, several works have been produced relating to computer ethics education at this level. However, the ever-increasing role and usage of computer technology means that ethical education related to computing is also necessary for non-professional/non-major computing/information systems students. Due to the differences between professional and non-professional education in terms of substance along with pragmatic reasons (e.g. lack of resources), the ordinary end-users need a different educational program. This paper first explores issues (i.e. challenges and problems to overcome) of end-user ethics teaching, second puts forward a solution based on a process of universalization, third argues that the universality thesis is adequate for the purpose of end-user education and finally demonstrates, with the help of three imaginary cases, how the chosen solution can be used to tackle the issues and educate ordinary end-users in universities.  Experienced professional engineers wrote these codes to provide guidance of ethical behavior for engineers in order to practice at their work places.  These codes help engineer to follow and perform under a standard of professional behavior that requires adherence to the highest principles of ethic conduct.

To make the admission, acquisition, and use of technology intelligent by understanding what the designed function of the technology is, its content and its context of use, and to make the admission, acquisition and use of technology subject to the binding jurisdiction of this institution’s educational, social, and organizational intents and authority.

The IEEE Code of Ethics provides a framework for our professional lives. For this to be effective, it is essential that the Institute have in place mechanisms by which ethical issues can be addressed, discussed and supported. This is the function of the IEEE Ethics Committee. In 1995, the IEEE Ethics Committee became an Institute-wide entity following a number of years in which a similar committee functioned through the United States Activities Board. This move was a recognition that the issues and activities associated with the committee are indeed global in nature.

The most important purpose of many ethical models are clearly written, easy to understand, eases of practice.  These models provide many standard guidance for professional engineers to follow and behave ethically in the work places.  They are integrated technology into our institution in such a way as to support positive growth of human educational processes and instruction, and to provide built-in evaluative means that protect internal human ecological aspects of our community that all technology necessarily effects.

In recognition of the importance of our technologies in affecting the quality of life throughout the world, and in accepting a personal obligation to our profession, its members and the communities we serve, do hereby commit ourselves to the highest ethical and professional conduct and agree to maintain and improve our technical competence and to undertake technological tasks for others only if qualified by training or experience, or after full disclosure of pertinent limitations;

Pros and Cons of these ethical codes:

        National Society of Professional Engineers web site contents plenty of information that leads user searching into many different ethical aspects.  While Professional Society for Sales and Marketing includes many examples to follow, the IEEE code is too short, and it does not have enough contents for all aspect in the design engineer aspect.  The NSPN and ASCE Guidelines to Practice Under the Fundamental Cannons of Ethics have some of the codes too detail and repeated while the contents of the ASEM, IEEE, and NAFTA are too short and general in each code.

    As an electrical engineer, I found the ethical codes of the IEEE website to be lesser any other codes, especially the codes of ASCE, NSPN, APS, PSSM.  To make the IEEE codes to be more ethical, each code should be followed by one or more related examples, so that would be ease of use and understandable...

Many of these codes are written in different ways, such as using different words and tones.  To improve any of these codes, I think they should be combined together into a well organized form.  That way would provide the standard guidelines of professional behavior to all engineers in the country, and these unique ethical codes would avoid many confusion and easy to remember.

Examples of Ethical in Research Conduction:

        Beginning with the breaches of trust that constitute major wrongdoing in research ("research misconduct"), I argue that these are more often examples of negligence or recklessness than they are of "fraud." Acts of negligence and recklessness figure not only in misconduct, narrowly defined, but in many lesser betrayals and defections that undermine trust. The presence or absence of an intentional deception is not a reliable indicator of the seriousness of some moral lapse. Such a lapse, where it does occur, may be simply a particularly poor response to a perennially difficult research responsibility.

        The level of trust that has characterized science and its relationship with society has contributed to a period of unparalleled scientific productivity. But this trust will endure only if the scientific community devotes itself to exemplifying and transmitting the values associated with ethical scientific conduct.  Consider the trust required for one member of a research team to use materials such as reagents, devices or computer programs, prepared by another member of the team, or the trust required for a researcher to base the design of a new project on results obtained by another laboratory. From the trusted party the trustier needs attention, concern, fairness, and competence as well as honesty. Emphasizing all of these factors is necessary because trustworthiness has too often been treated as the absence of deception.        

        To understand what makes for trustworthy conduct we need an understanding of the character of the defections and betrayals to which researchers are actually tempted. The most serious types of research wrongdoing, commonly called "research misconduct" (or, less aptly, "scientific misconduct") are sometimes called "fraud." Is that term an accurate one for most of the major departures from trustworthiness in research?...

Finally, I consider trust and trustworthiness among collaborating researchers and a range of intentional and unintentional behaviors that influence the character of these trust relationships. The supervisor-supervisee relationship is of particular significance because it is both a difficult area of responsibility for the supervisor and because this relationship is formative for a new researcher's subsequent expectations and behavior.

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            Message from webmaster:  These statements or short essays had been provided from many ethical students, speeches, discussions, etc. without knowing the author's name.  These are just FYI, and hopefully increase your ethical behaviors.