Numerous military academies around the world educate engineers in various disciplines such as civil, aeronautical, mechanical, or nuclear. Some exist primarily for this purpose, and in others, such as the US military academies, engineering education occurs alongside other programs. For simplicity, both will be referred to as military-technical academies (MTAs). It is the premise of this paper that MTAs and the engineers they educate differ in important ways from their civilian counterparts and the differences should necessarily impact engineering ethics education. After briefly examining civilian encouragement for ethical engineering practice, differences between military and civilian engineers are examined from a professional ethics perspective. In Section IV, differences between military and civilian engineering education programs are presented along with current approaches to ethics education in the US civilian environment. Finally, an approach to engineering ethics education appropriate for MTAs is presented. Note that this paper is written from the perspective of an engineering educator without special training in ethics but who has both a personal interest and an assigned duty to include ethical education as part of the engineering curriculum.
II. ENCOURAGING ETHICAL ENGINEERING PRACTICE
Concern for ethical behavior in the civilian engineering profession has grown tremendously in recent years. The profession is attempting to clarify the responsibilities and rights of engineers, and provide some measure of protection for engineers, thereby encouraging ethical choices in difficult situations.1 A common approach to incorporating ethical practice into the engineering profession has been the development of a code of practice. As early as 1912, codes of practice have been employed primarily to clarify professional responsibilities and expectations.2 More recent codes also address responsibility to the public interest such as truth, honesty, and fairness. In other words, they are designed to help the practicing engineer make moral decisions, but they do a poor job of this.3 Codes can be problematic since they are sometimes restrictively short, self-conflicting, and have limited legal authority. Moreover, their proliferation tends to compartmentalize professional ethics.4 They apply narrowly to the engineering practice concerned. That is, their scope may not include the issues faced, say, by the engineer in management. In light of these problems, it is noteworthy that industry is calling on the education system to provide additional ethical training for future engineers.5
The main benefit in codes is their nature as inspirational summaries of good practice, or ethical behavior. They help engineers highlight problem areas and provide encouragement needed to resolve concerns. More to the point, to be of any benefit, they rely on the individual engineer to have an already sound ethical perspective and ability to cope with such problems. The bottom line is that a good personal moral standard is still required for professional practice.
Other professions represented in the military have longer histories of concern for ethical practice than does engineering. These include doctors, lawyers, and clergy. It is interesting to note that in the US military, these professions are accorded special status and are not considered regular line officers. This is done purposely to allow members to be part of both professions simultaneously as much as possible and even to allow the profession of arms to be subservient in special instances. This is not done for military engineers in the US and many other nations. These engineers are, in doctrine and practice, military officers foremost and engineers second. What then are the differences between the civilian and military engineering professions and what are the implications of these differences?
III. PROFESSIONS COMPARED
It is useful to examine the civilian and military engineer in light of characteristics that make them part of a profession such as skills, education, regulation, and duty to the public. The table below provides a summary comparison of the professions.
| Professional Aspect | Civilian Engineer | Military Engineer |
| skills | technical analysis, design, judgment, personel and cost management | also military doctrine and protocol |
| education | 4-6 years college, continuing technical education | also professional military education, continuing procurement education |
| regulation | technical societies, local state and federal government | also military command structure and military regulation |
| responsibility to public | better society | protect society |
| responsibility to employer | meet contract, little off-job except conflict of interest | 24 hours/day, surrender some rights, lay down life if necessary |
| minimum standard of performance | public safety, accurate representation of product, unbiased testimony | also obedience to the chain of command |
| consequences of poor performance | loss of competitiveness, loss of job, possible legal ramifications | loss of life, battle, or national security |
One point to note in the table is that, in general, the military engineering officer has a broader and more varied set of responsibilities. To accomplish these in the military setting, officers surrender some personal rights. The other salient point is that mediocre performance leads to a loss of competitiveness. Financial consequences are the result for the civilian engineer. For the military, lack of competitiveness will endanger the command structure and endanger lives of soldiers using the mediocre equipment or procedures. With these comparisons in mind, how does the civilian educational establishment educate engineers to meet civilian demands, and what are the implications for the MTA, which must produce engineering officers to meet military requirements?
IV. SCHOOLS COMPARED
Schools preparing students for a specific profession have the advantage of focus of purpose as compared to a general university. MTAs enjoy this focus advantage, plus the additional benefit of unity of command. These advantages are important to the approaches recommended in Section V. First, however, we will examine problems faced by the civilian universities in their attempts to provide engineering ethics education as noted by Baum and others.
For purposes of this discussion, a major objective in engineering ethics education is to provide the students with the ability to identify ethical issues, frame the ethical problem, and take appropriate steps to resolve it. This is not a trivial task. This, rather than unexamined obedience to codes of practice, is what industry yearns for.
Some ethical problems are easy to identify, such as misuse of a patented design. Engineering schools do a fair job at getting this basic type of problem across to students. In an informal survey of my students at the US Air Force Academy (USAFA), most responded that such legal issues constitute “engineering ethics”. They have compartmentalized their professional ethics and fail to see areas such as equitable treatment of others as having anything to do with engineering. As an officer and educator I am challenged to break this incorrect paradigm. Ultimately, I would like their problem identification skills to be so refined that they can easily predict potential problems, and thereby avoid them.
Framing an ethical problem requires an ability to sort out relevant facts and influences on the decision process. Students attracted to engineering tend to view external facts as being objective and anything value-laden as being too subjective to deal with effectively.6 They will avoid the messy business of ethical decision making if allowed to do so. They also generally lack a historical awareness that would help to put a problem in proper perspective. The civilian faculty, by and large, come from this same pool and so are often not comfortable aiding the students. So one goal is simply to get the students to deal with value-laden decisions. They need some basic tools and perhaps a bit of practice dealing with problems they may face - specifically, sorting out relevant aspects of a problem.
When faced with the choice of ignoring or resolving an ethical problem, ideally an engineer tackles, or resolves, the problem with creativity and courage. Creative problem solving skills that are at the heart of developing good engineering designs and good battle plans are also those needed for resolving ethical problems. But do the students and faculty realize this? Additionally, ethical engineering practice requires courage, because resolving the issue may involve personal and professional risks. Courage, and the self-sacrifice it requires, is certainly an officership issue that should give the MTA an advantage.
Faculty strongly influence a university's character. We should examine this area for differences. Baum includes the following as desirable for an engineering ethics instructor:
When an MTA is staffed entirely, or in large part, by active duty military engineers, many of the above mentioned criteria are satisfied. This is analogous to having practicing engineers teach university courses. Military engineers do have knowledge of ethical issues in another profession: the profession of arms. As part of their training, they have had some introduction to basic ethical theory. The basic legal issues are readily acquired from texts and formal instruction as is done in many civilian schools. Professionalism issues are part of basic professional military education. Knowledge about employee situations in large organizations is present in the MTA faculty in the form of dealing with the military buearacracy. Knowledge about large commercial organizations is perhaps lacking. Fortunately this is perhaps the least important area for engineers headed for active duty, although such appreciation is certainly needed when dealing with counterparts in the defense industry.
Baum's list also points out that understanding the cultural orientation of the students is important if healthy classroom discussions about ethical topics are desired. At USAFA, an appreciation for the cultural orientation comes from two sources. First, entering students are surveyed about their values and attitudes. The results are periodically briefed to department faculty. This helps us appreciate the sometimes vast differences between and within their generation and ours. This is supplemented by a variety of other sources such as summaries about generation-X and echo-boomer traits. Second, and more important, is spending time getting to know the students. Small class sizes help. The primary means is faculty involvement with cadets outside of the classroom. Examples are academic advising, mentoring, coaching teams, advising clubs, teaching religious education classes, and having cadets in our homes as faculty "sponsors".
Baum's last point, first-hand knowledge of expected employment situations and expected ethical challenges, is precisely the reason line engineering officers are selected to teach at US military academies. They are role models with recent credible experiences. Consider this former West Point instructor:
Norman Schwarzkopf, who was an engineering mechanics instructor during one rotation, declares, “West Point taught the military ethos in the most effective way imaginable: It gave us war heroes for teachers.$#0148 Instructor Schwarzkopf would often “put aside the textbook, sit on the edge of the desk, and talk about what it means to be an officer, about values and morality and honor. I felt that was my responsibility far more than teaching the principles of friction and why wheels roll down hills. Sure, I wanted the cadets to understand mechanics - but only so they’d graduate and become good Army officers.”8The military faculty have “been there, done that”, and can relate this to the students in a credible manner. However, this points to the irony of the MTA strength - that ethics education will only be as strong as the ethical climate of the military at large, from which the MTA acquires instructors.
At civilian schools faculty often lack recent first-hand “knowledge from the field”, so case studies are often used. This is a useful approach, but recent first-hand knowledge makes them more believable still. As Baum notes, case studies are not the perfect solution, as cases often suffer from having already identified the major issues, thus denying the student the opportunity to identify the nature of the problem. Second, if care is not taken, the abundance of ethical crisis case studies can give a false impression as to the ethical state of the profession. Actual situations calling for extraordinary heroic action are fortunately few and far between. Lest I be too negative, let me state there are very good cases available and some tried techniques for presenting them,9 and they seem to work if done correctly.10 Some techniques will be discussed in the next section.
A related issue, not explored here, is that to meet the military ethical need, dealing with external behavior as many civilian schools tend to do, is not enough. Rather, core character traits and values that drive the personal ethical decision process must be dealt with to appropriately address the military need. This is the level at which we integrate diverse aspects of our lives, and it is at this level that engineering ethics must be dealt with if engineers and officers are to make ethical decisions. Staying at the surface, or professional behavior level, such as focusing on codes and accepted practice, will not accomplish this. Even simply providing improved ethical reasoning processes will not provide the desired results if the underlying values are amiss.
Why then should MTAs follow the lead of civilian engineering schools in the teaching of engineering ethics when the military need differs from the civilian counterpart? It is proposed in the next section that a better way is to take the unique needs and the unique strengths and plot a better course.
V. AN ENGINEERING ETHICS EDUCATION APPROACH FOR THE MTA
Any MTA ethics education approach must take into account that the cadets will be officers first, and engineers second. In addition to providing core engineering topics, the MTA must show how these relate to the profession of arms, and this includes the engineering ethics portions.
This paper is biased toward the approach taken at USAFA, “Ethics Across the Curriculum,“ because it exploits attributes inherent in the MTA. In this approach, all cadets take a moral philosophy course which provides some basic approaches and terminology. They also take law and history, courses which provide still more background for ethical problem solving. It is also noteworthy that the engineering majors take these classes along-side other cadets from different majors, including the humanities. Part of developing a viable personal ethical approach is to have an appreciation for differing perspectives, something the mixed classes provide. Even the core engineering courses are taken by all cadets, regardless of major!
The bulk of ethics education, at least in terms of contact time, is accomplished by the entire faculty and staff who provide ethics instruction, both for general military ethics and for their area of specialization. This is done as an integral part of the regular curriculum. The assumption is that faculty in various disciplines have the first-hand knowledge and interest about ethical issues in their discipline needed to encourage useful ethics discussions in their classrooms.11 Support for the faculty is provided by those vocationally involved in ethics education such as philosophy and law faculty and Chaplains. In addition to the previously mentioned extracurricular activities, the faculty and staff also get formally involved in ethics training through service as professional ethics advisors for the 36 cadet squadrons and through one-on-one mentoring of cadets found in violation of certain cadet standards.
This use of the entire faculty and staff for ethics instruction has the advantage of avoiding the ethical compartmentalization that specific courses or lessons may lead to, and also helps the cadets realize that moral issues touch all aspects of their lives. This is important for the military engineer who is on duty 24 hours a day. Perhaps most importantly, it is setting an example that discussion of ethical issues outside of formal ethics courses and lessons is acceptable. This "permission to discuss" yields great benefit as the cadets engage in discussion of ethical topics currently on their mind. Ethical issues will certainly get discussed in the privacy of their rooms, but by creating an atmosphere where discussion is encouraged everywhere, including the classroom, the faculty can interject perspectives shaped by time on active duty. This around-the-clock and around-the-campus mentoring approach is akin to the Jews' 31/2 millennium tradition of teaching their children from the rising of the sun to its setting so that the next generation would learn God's statutes.12 In a similar vein, the USAFA program could more properly be called “Ethics Across the Campus“ or “Ethics Around the Clock“ since it is not limited to curricular work.
Many students will bring a theological perspective to bear on ethical issues. So, in addition to bridging the gap between engineering and philosophy courses, developing an integrated ethical view in the students requires bridging the gap between philosophical and theistic ethical perspectives. This is potentially very powerful as a majority of our students share a Judeo-Christian ethical heritage, which includes support for traits we find desirable from a philosophical viewpoint.13 The MTA aims to produce leaders who are able to attend to the needs of their troops, and recognizes that the troops have a spiritual side that needs attention. The presence of Chaplains in the ranks attests to this institutional-level recognition. However, just as leaving all discussion of ethical theory to the vocational philosophers is a mistake in the Ethics Across the Curriculum approach, leaving all consideration of spiritual development to the Chaplains is a mistake. My own MTA has historically addressed spiritual development as a concern. Unfortunately, it is often left in the care of the Chaplains, although student participation in lay-led activities is currently on the increase.
At this point, I hope I have established that engineering education at the MTA is really just one cog in a large ethical education gear in the machine to train future officers. Now it is appropriate to present a few techniques that seem to work well in the MTA engineering classroom. After that, a few specific topics are discussed.
Underlying Principles
It is natural for an engineer to think in terms of solution procedures for ill-defined problems and specifically to apply heuristics to find a solution. This is, after all, the essence of the engineering method.14 Students find it interesting that such a principle and guideline approach works for engineering, battle planning, music composition, theology, and ethics!15 Note that application of a principle is generally dependent on the situation, or context, which makes this a valuable approach for ethics education. The goal here is to help the students gain experience framing a problem in terms of underlying principles and then determine which ones might be in conflict and which ones should take precedence in a given context.
Historical Short Stories
Use of brief historical stories related to the lesson at hand are good educational practice since they help cadets remember the topic. It is easy to include the ethical dimensions of the story and I often find that including the ethical issues expands the discussion beyond the technical issue at hand, and such discussion is the goal here. The second important benefit is helping students understand that ethical problems and accompanying solutions have been around for a long time. As Solomon said, “there is nothing new under the sun”.16 Knowing this helps keep problems in perspective and avoids falling into despair when faced with a daunting problem.
Case Studies
Case studies are widely used as a vehicle to teach engineering ethics and a large number are available pre-prepared. Likewise a variety of pedagogical approaches have been developed and published. Keeping in mind the MTA engineering ethics mission, a few points can help with case selection. First, the case must be relevant. Some of the pre-prepared cases about civilian industry may be interesting, but not captivating, for the MTA cadet. An example I find that works well is the case of covering up test failures in the Bradley fighting vehicle. It has a military tie, is recent, had the largest civil settlement of its kind, and a member of the Engineering Mechanics faculty was involved in the case. In fact, the faculty member's involvement is a fascinating case in itself.
I have found a number of previously developed case study presentation approaches work well:
Topics
In the case of an accredited MTA engineering program, it is necessary to provide ethical education expected by the engineering profession such as laws, regulations, and responsibilities of an engineer.18 There are a few topics of special interest to the military engineer that have good potential for ethical discussion in the classroom:
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The author would like to thank Col Cary Fisher for his enthusiasm for excellence in the craft of teaching and encouragement to bring professional topics into the engineering classroom, and LtCol Bill Rhodes for championing Ethics Across the Curriculum at USAFA.
+Opinions expressed in this paper are those
of the author alone and not necessarily the official policy of the US
Air Force Academy or any US government agency.
1Davis, M., Thinking Like an Engineer: The place of a Code of Ethics in the Practice of a Profession, Philosophy & Public Affairs, v20, n2 , pp150-167.
2Baum, R. J., Ethics and Engineering Curricula, The Hastings Center, Hastings-on-Hudson, 1980.
3Luegenbiehl, H. C., Codes of Ethics and the Moral Education of Engineers, in Ethical Issues in Engineering, D. G. Johnson ed., Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, 1991.
4Martin, M. W., and R. Schinzinger, Ethics in Engineering 2ed, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1989.
5Terry, R. E., and W. C. Hecker, A Process for Defining Desired Student Attributes and Competencies, Proceedings of Best Assessment Processes in Engineering Education II, Terre Haute, October 16-17, 1998.
6Baum.
7Self, D. J., E. M. Ellison, Teaching Engineering Ethics: Assessment of Its Influence on Moral Reasoning Skills, Journal of Engineering Education, v87 n1, January 1998, pp29-34.
8"The West Point Story" in The American Enterprise, Jul/Aug 99 quoted in W. Rhodes, EATC Orientation, USAFA Background Paper 1999.
9Harris, C. E. Jr, M. Davis, M. S. Pritchard, and M. J. Rabins, Engineering Ethics: What? Why? How? and When?, Journal of Engineering Education, v85 n2, April 1996, pp93-96.
10Self.
11Rhodes, W., Ethics Across the Curriculum and the Nature of Morality: Some Fundamental Propositions, Ethics Across the Curriculum Conference, Rochester, 1999.
12Deuteronomy 6:6-9.
13Panneberg, W., When Everything is Permitted, First Things, v80, February 1998, pp 26-30.
14Koen, B.V., Definition of the Engineering Method, American Society for Engineering Education, Washington, 1985.
15Nowack, M. L., Guideline Use in Non-Design Disciplines, Technical Report, CUED/C-EDC/TR52, Cambridge University Engineering Design Centre, 1997.
16Ecclesiastes 1:9-11.
17Harris.
18Luegenbiehl, H. C., Assessing the Ethics Component of ABET 2000, Proceedings of Best Assessment Processes in Engineering Education II, Terre Haute, October 16-17, 1998.