Learning to Listen: An Ethnographic Approach to Engineering Ethics Education

Abstract

Studies (STS) at Virginia Tech. For the past 6 years, she has conducted research on the historic 2001-2004 Washington, DC lead-in-drinking-water contamination. This work exposed wrongdoing and unethical behavior on the part of local and federal government agencies. In 2010, Dr. Lambrinidou co-conceived and co-taught the new graduate level engineering ethics class "Engineering Ethics and the Public." Her previous research focused on hospice and pediatric cancer care.

Engineering a Culture of Public Engagement in the Trump Era—Challenging the Status Quo

“…This, however, should not be the case because every day, engineers make highly complicated and critical decisions that directly affect the health and welfare of the public. Even though the work of the engineers is technical, there are broader social components associated with their work that cannot be ignored (Lambrinidou and Edwards, 2013). In fact, previous literature has shown that engineers who do not take into account the public concerns about their projects are much more vulnerable to self-interest, self-delusion, and institutional pressures that contribute to unethical Nguyen, Luan Engineering a Culture of Public Engagement in the Trump Era-Challenging the Status Quo and substandard decisions, leaving negative impacts on society (Lambrinidou and Edwards, 2013).…”

The Flint Water Crisis: Overturning the Research Paradigm to Advance Science and Defend Public Welfare

“…Many of our team members drew motivation from a Virginia Tech graduate class "Engineering Ethics and the Public". 4 Still, be cognizant that you are asking a great deal from your team. To date, our team has volunteered about six person-years effort on the Flint disaster.…”

A Graduate-level Engineering Ethics Course: An Initial Attempt to Provoke Moral Imagination

“…The course is a three-credit elective course offered annually to engineering students. The overall course itself was originally co-conceived and co-developed by an engineer, one of the authors of this paper, and a medical ethnographer, with the support of the National Science Foundation (NSF) [1]. The learning objectives, topics, and assignments are presented in Table 1.…”

“…A major motivation in developing this course was to prioritize listening as a core component of engineering practice and to consider the perspectives of non-experts (i.e., non-engineers, nonscientists, non-architects, etc.) in conventional decision-making processes [1], [2]. The course provides practices in and reflection on empathetic and in-depth listening.…”

“…In addition, several in-depth listening exercises have been integrated throughout the course. More details about the course are provided elsewhere [1], [2].…”