Student Perspectives of Aerospace Engineering Macroethics Issues and Education

Abstract

This work-in-progress research paper investigates undergraduate aerospace engineering students' perceptions of macroethics issues and education. Macroethics refers to the real-world ethical implications of engineering technology and the collective social responsibility of the engineering profession. Over the past two years, our research team, consisting of undergraduate students, engineering education researchers, and aerospace teaching faculty, have developed and implemented a one-day introductory macroethics lesson in a required sophomore aerospace engineering course at the University of Colorado Boulder, a large, public, research-intensive university in the Western U.S. One of our motivations for offering this macroethics lesson is our hypothesis that students are aware of macroethical issues in aerospace engineering but feel that their undergraduate education ignores these issues. This paper is a first attempt to gather data to investigate that hypothesis through an anonymous survey given to undergraduate aerospace engineering students. In this paper, we present initial analyses of our quantitative survey data as a basis for discussion with the engineering education research community. These results, along with future analyses and survey refinements, will inform future iterations of the macroethics lesson and motivate the need for the integration of macroethics across the aerospace curriculum.