Collaborative Research: Research Initiation: Using stories from traditional culture as case studies to teach virtue-based engineering ethics

NSF Award Search · 01002526DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT · $42,064 · view on nsf.gov ↗

Abstract

Engineers play a pivotal role in society. Therefore, it is critical to train engineering students to be ethical engineers. However, studies have shown that employers often see a lack of ethical decision-making among recent graduates. An innovative engineering profession for the 21st century requires engineers to reflect and act ethically when facing complex global, social, and ethical challenges of engineering practice. Traditional approaches to engineering ethics education have been largely limited to the use of codes of ethics of engineering societies and regulatory boards and case studies derived from disaster cases. Engineering ethics has been expressed primarily in rules, and these rules are primarily negative or prohibitive in nature. This rule-based approach, along with a focus on technical ethics, ignores the internal motivational element present in professional life that cannot be adequately accounted for by rules. In addition to rule ethics, there is another ethical tradition with a long history that can provide a more adequate framework for teaching engineering ethics: “virtue ethics” or “ethics of character”. The earliest moral theories in antiquity made virtue the focus of their account of the moral life. Virtue ethics focuses on questions of what kind of person one should be and how one may achieve that, thus it intimately ties moral behavior with one’s character. This project will use stories from traditional culture of different countries to help engineering s

Key facts

NSF award ID
2508906
Awardee
Northern Michigan University (MI)
SAM.gov UEI
M6MUFMANCJC7
PI
HSIN-LING HSIEH
Primary program
01002526DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT
All programs
EDUCATION RESEARCH, ENGINEERING EDUCATION
Estimated total
$42,064
Funds obligated
$42,064
Transaction type
Standard Grant
Period
09/15/2025 → 08/31/2027