K-State civil engineering professor part of research team that receives NSF grant to study ethics in science and engineering graduate education

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Source: Steve Starrett, 785-532-1583, steveks@k-state.edu
News release prepared by: Keener A. Tippin II, 785-532-6415, media@k-state.edu

Monday, October 9, 2006

K-STATE CIVIL ENGINEERING PROFESSOR PART OF RESEARCH TEAM THAT RECEIVES NSF GRANT TO STUDY ETHICS IN SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING GRADUATE EDUCATION

MANHATTAN -- Chances are most people give little thought to the ethical conduct that goes into the building of that new highway, wastewater treatment plant or even the space shuttle.

That is until something goes wrong -- such as the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger in 1986 or the recent collapse of a ceiling section in the tunnel segment of the "Big Dig," the Central Artery/Tunnel Project in Boston, that killed one.

Yet, high ethical conduct is the hallmark of excellence in engineering and scientific research, design and practice, according to Steve Starrett, an associate professor of civil engineering at Kansas State University and member of a collaborative effort with researchers from the University of Kansas and the University of Missouri-Kansas City to examine graduate ethics education in engineering and science education.

The team's project, the University of Kansas Initiative on Ethics Education in Science and Engineering, received a $300,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to bring together experts in ethics, educators and graduate students in the sciences and engineering, and to determine best practices in learning methodologies for ethics education in the two areas.

"Engineers have a lot of responsibility and authority," Starrett said. "Along with that comes the potential for unethical opportunities or corrupt situations, such as bribery, taking short cuts or dealing with individuals trying to take advantage of situations."

Graduate engineering programs routinely emphasize technical topics over procedural ethical conduct, Starrett said. That means few graduate students receive formal ethics training that would enable them to navigate through what Starrett describes as the often "subtle ethical complexities that they encounter in the design and decision-making processes related to their research or practice."

Starrett said the National Science Foundation project will develop various options to address the need for ethics education in engineering and science. Those options include a stand-alone ethics course for science and engineering graduate students; embedded ethics content throughout general course curriculum; and a combination of the two.

The researchers will sponsor faculty ethics workshops to train and educate fellow faculty at the three universities about the different courses. The researchers also will evaluate students before and after the implementation of the different ethics programs to test the how well each approach worked and what effect teaching styles had on the students' learning.

According to Starrett, the long-term goal of the grant is to establish a comprehensive approach to ethics education so graduate students in all fields are exposed to ethical concepts in a variety of contexts.

"It's fairly complicated. There is a difference between studying what are engineering failures compared to engineering ethics," he said.

"For example, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is renovating Tuttle Creek Dam and spending approximately $200 million to make it stronger," Starrett said. "The corps used the best knowledge it had available when the dam was built. As it turns out, though, the dam wasn't very well suited to withstand possible strong earthquakes -- but it wasn't unethical to build the damn the way the Corps of Engineers did. This is unlike the Challenger situation, where there were some unethical decisions made -- not necessarily by engineers but the management team that overruled the engineers -- that led to the fatal explosion."

Engineers and scientists need to be prepared for and to make good ethical decisions when faced with regular ethical challenges in business, government or in research labs, Starrett said.