Educating the Citizen Engineer: Making a Case for Community Service in Engineering

The first two fundamental principles in the ASME Code of Ethics are that” engineers uphold and advance the integrity, honor and dignity of the engineering profession by: I. Using their knowledge and skill for the advancement of human welfare; II. Being honest and impartial, and serving with fidelity the public, their employers and clients…” These principles involve the concept of “the public good” and are properly part of engineering ethics — yet it is difficult to find a good place in the curriculum to address these principles. This paper will present the idea of using community service in engineering as a context for teaching this aspect of engineering ethics. The author has considerable experience in community service projects — related to engineering courses in which project work is required and graded, and also related to projects that involve purely voluntary efforts. Specific examples of projects that have been used will be given. The projects have also been presented as part of the larger Honor Concept that the author has been instrumental in developing for the School of Engineering at Grand Valley State University. “The habit of apprehending a technology in its completeness: this is the essence of technological humanism, and this is what we should expect education in higher technology to achieve. I believe it could be achieved by making specialist studies the core around which are grouped liberal studies which are relevant to those specialist studies. But they must be relevant; the path to culture should be through a man’s specialism, not by-passing it…A student who can weave his technology into the fabric of society can claim to have a liberal education; a student who cannot weave his technology into the fabric of society cannot claim even to be a good technologist.”  Lord Ashby, Technology and the Academics