Professionalism and Ethics Education: more than Just a One‐Credit Course

Abstract

The present engineering educational system is not doing an adequate job of instiling and maintaining the ideals of professionalism and ethics amongst engineering students and practicing engineers. Under the present system, there is little incentive for an engineer to familiarize himself with issues in professionalism and ethics. In fact, there are those who contend that increasing a future engineer's exposure to professionalism and ethics during the course of training is not practical. This paper presents arguments against four of the most common points that are used by those who feel professionalism and ethics cannot be effectively included in our engineering educational system. The paper concludes with several recommendations for increasing the exposure of more engineers to issues in professionalism and ethics at the academic level and at the practicing level.