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Almost all engineering accreditation organizations require an ethics class. However, most students and universities do not treat the class seriously. I took an honors course run by a philosophy professor aimed at general STEM students. We learned first about the different ideas of ethics, such as deontology and utiltarianism. We then applied these systems to various ethical issues in engineering, discussed books about STEM ethical problems, and were required to write a 15 page paper about a current ethics debate, discussing what perspectives had been taken on it(mine, for example was autonomous military drones). However, I then TAd for a non-honors ethics class for CS students, run by a CS adjunct who had so much work teaching she could not focus on teaching any of her classes well. Most of it was reading from slides, multiple choice tests, a 2 page essay of what one thought about an ethical topic, and no discussion of what ethics is, or why something might be unethical. With the exception of the class I took, which required membership in a specific honors college, and only had 20 students a semester all STEM ethics classes were taught that way.

It's not enough to have a course. You have to take it seriously.



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