A look at engineering ethics education and research in 2023

2023 has been a great year for engineering ethics education and I would like to celebrate the successes of my peers. There were loads of interesting publications and initiatives, and it was wonderful to see how this field grows via collaboration, friendships and efforts to build each other up, rather than competition. My apologies for any publication or project that I might have overlooked. This apology comes with the invitation to add a link in the comments to any article or initiative in engineering ethics education that I missed. Feel welcome to mention your own work in this area, especially if you are a PhD researcher.

• Justin Hess, Alison Joanne Kerr, Ph.D., Athena Lin?&?Andrew Chung?published a Review of the 2016 National Academy of Engineering Exemplary Ethics Programs. Plus, another review authored by Justin, Athena, Andrew Whitehead and Andrew Katz explores how ethics, diversity, equity, and inclusion relate in engineering.?I am always excited to see a new article by Justin and his colleagues.?Justin is one of the most productive and interesting engineering ethics education scholars & the 2023 recipient of the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics annual conference Early Career Award.
• Two other scholars whom I admire are Dayoung Kim and Brent K Jesiek . I want to particularly highlight their publication on political aspects underpinning engineering and engineering education, a topic that is much neglected in EER.
• Ashish H. and Aditya Johri make a great team, and in 2023 we were lucky to see several publications on topics ranging from generative AI to the use of roleplays to teach engineering ethics.
• Virginia Grande , Thomas Taro Lennerfors , Anne-Kathrin Peters , Kristina von Hausswolff draw on ethical theory to understand the ethics of the teacher as a role model in engineering education.
• Andrew McAninch makes the case for the complementarity of micro and macroethical approaches.
• A decade after the influential Cambridge Handbook of Engineering Education Research, Aditya Johri published the International Handbook of Engineering Education Research (IHEER), which includes several chapters on ethics, culture an scoietal themes. This is an open access editorial project that no doubt will further strengthen the EER community.
• TU Delft is implementing some of the most philosophically rich pedagogies for engineering education. In 2023, Janna van Grunsven , Taylor Stone ?& Lavinia Marin published in the European Journal of Engineering Education an article describing how they strive to fostering responsible anticipation in engineering ethics education.
• In Denmark, Tom Boersen / B?rsen / Borsen has been growing for a decade an interdisciplinary master program in Techno-Anthropology, which he describes in this chapter. Also at Aalborg, Henrik Worm Routhe is on a roll publishing his very interesting doctoral research on interdisciplinarity in engineering education, which highlights him as a rising star of EER. Here he is with a literature review on leadership and management in engineering education and a coauthored publication on interdisciplinary project types.
• The University of San Diego has a great (and big) team developing sociotechnical educational programmes and initiatives. I want to highlight the research by Diana Chen , Marissa Forbes, Gordon Hoople , Susan Lord alongside Joel Alejandro Mejia examining whether emphasizing the role of people in engineering influence the memorability of engineering content. Diana also wrote a chapter for the International Handbook of Engineering Education Research describing institutional examples for promoting social justice alongside champions working in this area at Colorado School of Mines ( Jon Leydens ) and University of Toronto ( Cindy Rottmann ). I also want to add here another contribution by Cindy Rottmann, Emily Moore and Andrea Chan which won the best paper award at the IEEE-ETHICS 2023: Reifying Dominant Ideologies: Consequences of Decoupling Equity from Ethics in Engineering Education
• In Mexico, the Monterrey Tec team led by Jorge Membrillo-Hernández aims to bring ethics, sustainability and societal themes throughout the curriculum, via Challenge Based Learning. Their pedagogical efforts are documented in several publications, such as this review of socially oriented education authored alongside Patricia Vázquez-Villegas , Patricia Caratozzolo and Vianney Lara .
• When it comes to integrating global considerations in engineering education and research, there’s no better team than Rockwell F. Clancy, PhD , Qin Zhu & Scott Streiner . In this ASEE paper coauthored with Andrea R. Gammon , Xianghong Wu, Ryan Thorpe they describe a global engineering ethics course. I want to add to the list the great paper putting on the table the question of Why Should Ethical Behaviors Be the Ultimate Goal of Engineering Ethics Education, published by Rocky and Qin in the Journal of Business Ethics.
• While Humanitarian Engineering research group (University of Twente) is setting up a Master in Humanitarian Engineering, we are nearing the 10 year anniversary of UCL’s Integrated Engineering Programme, which has exposed several generations to authentic problems of a sociotechnical nature, including the How to Change the World programme. The program has grown throughout the years via the contributions of a dedicated team (cc John Mitchell , Emanuela Tilley , Kate Roach , Fiona Truscott , Matheus de Andrade , Chika Nweke, Ph.D., Iva Burova , Vivek Ramachandran ) and I want to highlight Emanuela Tilley ’s inaugural professorial lecture, which intertwines a story of personal dedication and curriculum design.
• ?Initiatives and Research into inclusive and decolonial approaches are necessary and continuously expanding. In North America, Joel Alejandro Mejia , Walter Lee and Homero Murzi, Ph.D. are some of its longtime champions whose work I had the pleasure to read. I recommend the IHEER chapter authored by Joel and Julie P. Martin on Critical Perspectives on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Research in Engineering Education, alongside the chapter authored by James Holly, Jr. , Kelly Cross, PhD and Walter Lee calling for race-conscious research practices?in EER, plus the ASEE contribution first authored by the PhD researcher Karen Martinez Soto, PhD enquiring whether LatinX is a colonial term.
• ?I also want to highlight the different ways in which scholars across the globe engage in counteracting colonial approaches in engineering education. To name a few: in Brazil, we have Cristiano Cordeiro Cruz , and from his many many interesting works, I want to highlight this 2023 publication which explores the concept of the Amerindian?Buen Vivir?as a Paradigm for Another Possible Engineering Practice and Education. Zach Simpson is working in this area at University of Johannesburg, and in this article he examines engineering students’ perceptions of decolonised education. In Canada, Jillian Seniuk Cicek is actively promoting decolonial approaches, and first authored a dedicated chapter for the IHEER alongside Stephanie Masta , Tom Goldfinch ,and Bruce Kloot . In Mexico, Inés Sáenz Negrete and Pablo Ayala Enríquez are bringing decolonial perspectives and promoting the significance of indigenous knowledge at Monterrey Tec via challenge based learning.
• ?There is also some tremendously interesting work conducted in the field of emotions in engineering education. Johanna L?nngren , Inês Direito , Khairiyah Mohd-Yusof , Dr. Idalis Villanueva Alarcón , Maria Berge, Nihat Kotluk , Roland Tormey and James Huff have been hard at work this year developing this area, preparing a special issue for The European Journal of Engineering Education, publishing in the Journal of Engineering Education a study examining compassion and moral reasoning and a chapter for IHEER and currently working on a literature review on emotions in engineering education.
• ?I want to humbly conclude this list of publications with a literature review on the history of engineering education. Alongside my brilliant teammate Gunter Bombaerts , we use this historical survey to articulate 5 major responsibilities for technological universities. Also, with Alison Gwynne-Evans , Aleksandra Kazakova and Qin Zhu , i published a survey of global themes in engineering ethics education for the IHEER.
• Sarah Hitt and Wendy Attwell are continuing the amazing work under the umbrella of the Engineering Professors' Council , developing several versions of the Engineering Ethics toolkit, which is now expanding to a Sustainability toolkit. Alongside Amy Banzaert and Olga Pierrakos , Sarah also published a chapter on Liberal Arts education for the International Handbook of Engineering Education Research.
• ?In 2023, Springer’s Philosophy of Engineering and Technology Series published two collections which included contributions on education: a new volume exploring the conversations between engineering, humanities and social sciences in the perennial series edited by Steen Hyldgaard Christensen and his colleagues Anders Buch , Eddie Conlon, Christelle Didier , Mitcham, Carl and Mike Murphy + the proceedings of the 2021 fPET conference edited by Albrecht Fritzsche and Andrés Santa-María.
• Marc Steen ?? published his book on & for Ethics for people who work in tech, which contains many practical examples and also invitations and exercises to integrate ethics in projects. It is also accompanied by the website https://ethicsforpeoplewhoworkintech.com
• Madeline Polmear organised the 2023 SEFI Ethics spring school all by herself, with minimal institutional support. We got to meet in Brussels, talk about ethics education and have fun. Maddie is bringing her wealth of experience in her new role in the UK, which is a big positive move for Kings College London.
• This post would not be complete without putting the spotlight on Diana Bairaktarova and Tom Staley, who continued their innumerable efforts into growing engineering ethics education and supporting scholars outside the US by hosting at Virginia Tech a two-day hybrid workshop that drew 90 participants from 10 countries.
• I also want to highlight the “critical conversation” retreats and online meetings organised throughout 2023 by the network Engineering, Social Justice and Peace, and to draw attention to the 2024 conference taking place at Chalmers University in Sweden.
• Finally, my beloved community of the SEFI - European Society for Engineering Education Ethics SIG is hard at work preparing the first Handbook of Engineering Ethics Education. The project is led by editors Tom Boersen / B?rsen / Borsen and Shannon Chance , who are joined by Roland Tormey, Gunter Bombaerts , Thomas Taro Lennerfors and me (as editors) and more than 100 scholars at different career stages and from diverse parts of the world.
• Where we are now and all the work we see in engineering ethics education and research is made possible by the efforts of many pioneers before us, who have made a significant contribution to creating the field and giving it legitimacy: Michael Loui , Joseph Herkert , Mitcham, Carl , to name a few to whom my gratitude extends.I am very much interested in connecting with doctoral researchers working in engineering ethics & sustainability, including sociotechnical and interdisciplinary approaches. I
• My resolution for 2024 is to use my roles to give as much visibility and opportunities as possible to early career scholars. Please be in touch & wish everyone a happy and collaborative New Year!

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