Auburn University is at the forefront of engineering education. It is ranked 33rd in the country for public institution undergraduate engineering programs, per the U.S. News and World Report, with over 22,000 research publications and more than 200 active researchers.
While Auburn sets the standard for engineering education, engineers themselves are at the forefront of human innovation. They provide the practical means of crossing rivers, traveling quickly and even space travel. Engineers provided us the wheel, the car and the rocket… yet they also created the gun, tear gas and the missile.
To be at the forefront of human innovation asks not just “How do we?” but “Should we?” Should we create weapons of mass destruction? Should we travel faster? Should we have computers this powerful? What will this do to the environment?
Sometimes, questions of ethics can be small-scale. Sometimes, they concern the treatment of employees and sometimes public safety, but every question of ethics is an important one, because workplace ethics are what protect individuals, environments and the public.
Why then does Auburn University not require aerospace engineers to take an ethics class? Every other engineering student does, and it is obvious why. Furthermore, it would appear that aerospace is more dependent on ethics than other types of engineering.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, aerospace engineers “design, develop, and test aircraft, spacecraft, satellites, and missiles.” In other words, they develop weapons of war. While that is far from the whole picture, it is an important aspect, because war is an ethical question.
In a time of controversy surrounding the death of innocents in Gaza and the bombing of drug smuggling boats off the coast of Venezuela, it is paramount that the engineers designing the weapons used for these attacks are aware of what it means to be ethical. It is important that they ask if they should innovate and develop these weapons to begin with. We have already seen the effect of blind innovation through the invention of the machine gun and the nuclear bomb.
The integration of ethics into the curriculum is a requirement for accreditation by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET). This is reviewed every year, though one is left curious as to why other engineering students are required to take ethics at all if that is the case.
Ethics is not absent from the aerospace curriculum, but it does seem incompletely realized.
The Auburn Creed states, “I believe in obedience to law because it protects the rights of all. I believe in the human touch, which cultivates sympathy with my fellow men and mutual helpfulness and brings happiness for all." If this is what Auburn University stands for, then it has a duty to send engineers into the workforce who know how to protect the rights of all and who believe in the human touch. Auburn University spends time instilling these values into its students, including aerospace engineers, but is it enough?
Auburn University has a duty to teach ethics to aerospace engineers.
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