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Evolution of Students’ Varied Conceptualizations About Socially Responsible Engineering:
A Four Year Longitudinal Study

Rulifson, G.**, A.R. Bielefeldt. 2018. Science and Engineering Ethics. 36 pp.

Abstract

Engineers should learn how to act on their responsibility to society during their education. At present, however, it is unknown what students think about the meaning of socially responsible engineering. This paper synthesizes 4 years of longitudinal interviews with engineering students as they progressed through college. The interviews revolved broadly around how students saw the connections between engineering and social responsibility, and what influenced these ideas. Using the Weidman Input–Environment–Output model as a framework, this research found that influences included required classes such as engineering ethics, capstone design, and some technical courses, pre-college volunteering and familial values, co-curricular groups such as Engineers Without Borders and the Society of Women Engineers, as well as professional experiences through internships. Further, some experiences such as technical courses and engineering internships contributed to confine students’ understanding of an engineer’s social responsibility. Overall, students who stayed in engineering tended to converge on basic responsibilities such as safety and bettering society as a whole, but tended to become less concerned with improving the lives of the marginalized and disadvantaged. Company loyalty also became important for some students. These results have valuable, transferable contributions, providing guidance to foster students’ ideas on socially responsible engineering.