Engineering Ethics in Engineering Education: A Portuguese Experience
Author(s):
Paulo M. S. Tavares de Castro
Paulo M. S. Tavares de Castro,
Faculdade de Engenharia de Universidade dos Porto Rua dos
Bragas, 4099 Porto, Portugal
email: ptcastro@fe.up.pt, tel.: +351 2
205 1241; fax: +351 2 205 9125
Abstract
After a concise description of the author's institution,
reference is made to engineering education and profession in
Portugal. The role of the Portuguese professional association
of engineers - Ordem dos Engenheiros is described.
Some experiences of addressing ethics topics in engineering
education in Portugal are then presented and discussed.
Back To Top
Introduction
Topics to be dealt with in the 1999 International Conference
on Ethics in Engineering and Computer Science include:
- International perspectives on means of supporting
responsible engineering practice and on education and
continuing education in ethics in engineering;
- Effective and engaging 'active-learning' classroom
activities for fostering the proficiency in engineering
ethics;
- Comprehensive plans for engineering ethics education to
foster such proficiency;
- Using field work and service learning in programs of
professional ethics;
- The latest thinking and initiatives of the engineering
and scientific professional societies and of ethically
proactive employers of engineers, scientists, and computer
scientists;
- What has been learned about how best to foster and
support responsible practice in industry via programs of
education, mediation, and advice and via formal and informal
complaint channels;
- New scholarship on professional responsibility in
engineering and computer science, including cases and
analyses of moral change in engineering and science.
The present contribution is mainly concerned with the first
item of this list. It describes experiences in which the author
has been involved. Taking into account the international
character of this conference, it seems adequate to start by
giving a concise description of the author's own institution -
the Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto
(FEUP), and of general issues of engineering education in
Portugal. The following topics will be addressed in
sequence:
- The Universidade do Porto; the Faculdade de
Engenharia;
- Assessment of universities in Portugal;
- The engineering profession in Portugal; the Ordem dos
Engenheiros;
- The accreditation of Engineering degrees by the Ordem
dos Engenheiros; consequences;
- Interest in ethics issues within FEUP;
Examples of initiatives with an explicit ethics content:
- Social Aspects of Computing - semester long course in the
4th year of the 5 year degree - licenciatura - in
Informatics and Computing Engineering;
- Ethics and Engineering - one lecture for the 5th (final)
year of the Civil Engineering licenciatura
degree;
- Teaching Engineering: Profession and Ethics - one lecture
for the course on 'Teaching Engineering' for the academic
staff of FEUP.
The Universidade do Porto; the Faculdade de
Engenharia
The Universidade do Porto was founded in 1911, by
legislation that created two new universities besides the
already existing Universidade de Coimbra, one of the
oldest in Europe. The history of the Universidade do
Porto is directly related to the local social and economic
environment and the aspirations of the city inhabitants. The
university's origins can be traced to the Nautical School
created in 1762 and the Drawing and Design School (1779), both
created upon request of the traders of Porto. In 1911 the
university was created as the confederation of schools of
higher education already in existence in the 19th century: the
Polytechnic Academy (1837) and the School of Medicine and
Surgery (1836). Three faculties were instituted in 1911:
Sciences (with an affiliated School of Engineering), Medicine,
and Commerce.
Today the university is composed of 14 schools, which award
licenciatura (licenciate, a 5 years full time degree),
MSc and PhD, and an institute awarding the MBA. The
Universidade do Porto is the largest university in
Portugal. It awards 42 different licenciatura and over
70 MSc degrees. Teaching staff includes near one thousand
teachers with the PhD degree, and the number of students is
close to 25000.
The Faculdade de Engenharia (engineering school)
can trace its origins to 1762. It is today one of the largest
schools in the Universidade do Porto, with near 4700
students and a teaching staff of 440, 65% holding a doctoral
degree. FEUP awards 8 different licenciatura degrees:
Civil Engineering, Mining Engineering, Mechanical Engineering,
Management and Industrial Engineering, Electrical and Computers
Engineering, Informatics and Computing Engineering,
Metallurgical Engineering, and Chemical Engineering. FEUP also
awards 16 different MSc degrees.
Further to its own laboratories, FEUP has a number of
research centers and industry/university interface institutes.
This universe of organisations where FEUP is either the legal
entity or has a key role in their activities, is now
responsible for an increasingly important research and
technology transfer activity, particularly since Portugal
became member of the European Union in the mid eighties. Since
then, the involvement of FEUP in European Union r&d
projects experienced a continuous and marked increase.
Nowadays FEUP is seen as an important actor in the European
engineering education scene, as was recently recognised in a
European wide survey of engineering schools carried out by the
German magazine Der Spiegel1.
Back To Top
Assessment of Universities in Portugal
Formal systematic quality assurance procedures carried out
by the universities themselves has no tradition in Portugal,
because like in many other continental European countries -
universities were until recently very closely controlled by the
Ministry for Education. A movement towards greater autonomy
took place during the last decade. This movement was based on
philosophical or political arguments, but also on the very
pragmatic concern that due to the great expansion of the higher
education system, it was plainly impossible to run the system
from the capital Lisbon.
For many decades the higher education system in Portugal was
very slow moving, and even issues like curriculum
design had to meet the approval of the Ministry for Education
in Lisbon. With the new autonomy many issues are now decided
locally. Obviously, the question of quality assurance was
raised. In earlier times quality assurance was carried out
through detailed ex ante regulations, by the Ministry
of Education.
With the arrival of a great level of autonomy a new system
had to be devised. Under the leadership of the Universidade
do Porto, a detailed study of systems of quality assurance
in Europe was carried out in Portugal. A procedure broadly
based on the Dutch system was favoured, and it was the basis
for the present national procedure for assessment of
universities.
Engineering degrees at Portuguese universities are the
object of at least two separate quality assessments or
reviews:
- the accreditation process carried out by the professional
association - Ordem dos Engenheiros - dealt with in
the next section of this paper, and
- the national procedure of assessment of
universities.
The two systems have rather different objectives: the
Ordem dos Engenheiros procedure seeks to check whether
or not the degrees satisfy certain minimum criteria, whereas
the national system of quality assessment has the main
objective of promoting quality in all aspects of university
life.
The national system is explicitly not linked to funding; it
is not based on performance indicators, but instead on peer
reviews. The system has the following features:
- self evaluation reports are the core of the
procedure;
- it is nation-wide, periodical and covers all
disciplines;
- opinions of students are taken into account by the
external visiting committees;
- reports are made public;
- it is not linked to funding, however institutions that
fail to implement the recommendations of the visiting
committees may be penalised;
- the assessment will be implemented in successive phases,
starting with teaching and being extended later to research
and services.
Back To Top
The Engineering Profession in Portugal; the
Ordem dos Engenheiros
Engineering education in Portugal is carried out at two
levels:
- at universities, which award the academic degree of
licenciado em engenharia (licentiate) after
successful completion of a 5 years programme of full time
study, and
- at polytechnics, which run courses leading to the
bacharel (bachelor) academic degree, which is
awarded after successful completion of a 3 years programme of
full time study.
During the last decades the professional titles corresponded
to these different types of higher education graduates as
follows: licentiates were automatically known as
engenheiros (engineers), whereas bachelors were known
as engenheiros tècnicos (technical
engineers).
In order to become a member of the professional association
of engineers in Portugal - the Ordem dos Engenheiros -
a licentiate degree is required. According to recent law, now
only members of the Ordem dos Engenheiros are entitled
to the use of the professional title of Engineer, which is
therefore a professional title protected by law in this
country. This means that the possibility of using the
professional title of Engineer is no longer automatically
recognised to the holder of a licentiate degree. In order to
use that professional title, the licentiate must first become a
member of the Ordem dos Engenheiros.
Regarding the graduates of the shorter courses (the 3 years
degree obtained in polytechnics), those are not entitled to
become members of the Ordem dos Engenheiros, unless
they obtain the licentiate degree. This degree may be obtained
through successful completion of a special 2 years programme of
further study, either at the universities or, in some special
cases, in polytechnics.
From the legal point of view, membership of the Ordem
dos Engenheiros is required to become an Engineer. A
licentiate is not automatically admitted as a member. First,
the Ordem dos Engenheiros will check whether or not
his or her degree is already accredited by the Ordem dos
Engenheiros. If that is the case, the candidate will be
accepted as a member in training, and the training period,
carried out at his or her employer, is no longer than two
years. In case the degree is not accredited, then the Ordem
dos Engenheiros may require an admission examination,
before the candidate is admitted as a member in training.
The practical relevance of holding the professional title of
Engineer (ie, to be a licensed engineer) concerns the
several activities that can only be carried out by those who
hold that title. Just to mention the most common situation,
designs for buildings will only be accepted and eventually
approved by the appropriate municipal authorities in case the
design is signed by a professional (licensed) engineer.
Accreditation is requested by the institution that organises
the engineering degree. Ordem dos Engenheiros charge
approximately US$3300 as a contribution to the costs of the
exercise. The accreditation process has the objective of
evaluating the conformity of the education with the technical
and professional model of engineer represented by Ordem dos
Engenheiros. However, as already mentioned, any holder of
a licentiate degree (or legal equivalent) may be a candidate to
membership of Ordem dos Engenheiros, even if his/her
degree is not accredited, but then must pass an admission
examination.
The accreditation process begin with the preparation of a
dossier including information on the degree:
- academic staff, students workload, numbers of
students,
- objectives of the degree,
- curriculum, including optional courses and
areas,
- teaching policy and matters related to teaching,
- provisions for the supervision of students,
- data on library facilities and their use,
- short individual cv's of the academic staff, and
time they spend in the institution;
- for each course: contents, textbooks, provisions for
students' assessment, examples of examinations,
- laboratories, workshops, and computer facilities used by
the students.
Information on the institution is also included:
- management structure, budget, degrees awarded,
- presentation of the institution including facilities
available,
- interaction with other organisations in Portugal and
abroad.
After study of this dossier by the accreditation board for
the relevant discipline, the institution is visited during one
or two days, and discussions are held with the management,
academic staff, and students. A report is then drafted by the
visiting committee, and checked by the institution for possible
errors. The visiting committee - accreditation board for the
discipline - then evaluates the several parameters examined.
These are related to the management of the institution,
academic staff, organisation of the degree, curriculum
(basic subjects, engineering sciences, technical subjects),
provisions for students selection and supervision, facilities
and institutional culture. The full list of items to be
examined numbers 119, of which 43 are considered particularly
important. The board then drafts a decision proposal, and the
final decision is reached by the Ordem dos
Engenheiros.
Similarly to the ABET Engineering Criteria 2000, Ordem
dos Engenheiros also looks for ethics-related material
within the curriculum. According to ABET 2000
engineering programs must demonstrate that their graduates have
'... an understanding of professional and ethical
responsibility'. Ordem dos Engenheiros, in the
guide-lines for evaluators, states that evaluators should look
for '... awareness of social and ethical problems of the
engineering profession; 'sense of responsibility of the
engineer as regards problems of safety, health and
environment'.
There is an increasingly widespread belief that the
education of engineers must include non-technical
subjects2, so
that engineering students may be exposed during their studies
with notions, issues and problems that will help them to become
better professionals/citizens in the future.
Taking into account this situation, and the accreditation
requirements previously mentioned, the Faculdade de
Engenharia da Universidade do Porto is now including, in
the curricula of its degree courses, seminars and
lectures that explicitly address engineering ethics
problems.
Also, because engineers are frequently involved in business
transactions, reference is made to issues of business ethics.
One current trend is the adoption by companies of ethics
programs to police their own conduct. Companies 'are
expected to take steps to prevent and detect misconduct before
harm occurs'3. Large companies in Portugal already have explicit
codes of ethics (see for example the case of PETROGAL, a major Portuguese petrol company.). In
the present globalisation of the economy, knowledge of
practices in different parts of the world is important,
particularly so since an international code of business ethics
is perhaps still far from existence4,5.
The present author is one of the staff members involved in
actions designed to raise awareness of these issues among the
students of FEUP. The following paragraphs will give details of
some of these actions.
Social Aspects of Informatics' - semester long course in
the 4th year of the 5 year degree licenciatura - in
Informatics and Computing Engineering, first offered
1997/1998
This semester long course, co-ordinated by the present
author, meets once per week. In 1997/8 it consisted of 12
sessions of 2 hours, as described below. It is designed as a
series of lectures by experts in the several topics, who make
presentations followed by discussion. The invited experts have
very diversified backgrounds, including one professor of
religions science, lawyers, economists, engineers engaged in
management of technology, and an expert in electronic
commerce.
The ACM/IEEE document Computing Curricula 1991: Report
of the ACM/IEEE Joint Curriculum Task Force5, contains suggestions concerning a
course (or 'set of knowledge units') on 'Social, Ethical and
Professional Issues' (pp.68-69). These suggestions were taken
into account in the design of this course.
The WWW site for the 1997/1998 edition of this course is
FEUP. The course was composed of the following
sessions:
- 3 March - Frei Bento Domingues (Professor of
Science of Religions, Universidade Lusûfona, Lisbon,
and Dominican priest): Ethics: Laic and Religious
Inspirations;
- 10, 17, 24, 31 March, 21, 28 April. Dr Manuel Veiga de
Faria (lawyer, Porto): Legal concerns:
- Informatics and privacy rights; database protection,
- Informatics and intellectual property,
- Informatics and civil responsibility of the
producer,
- Computing crimes.
- 12 May - Prof Jose Manuel L S Moreira (Faculty for
Economics, Universidade do Porto): Market Economy,
Business Ethics';
- 19 May -Mr Gunther Hoffmann (Weyerhaeuser Company,
Tacoma, USA): Management of Technology;
- 26 May - Prof J Falco e Cunha (FEUP), Electronic
Commerce;
- 2 June - Dr Emanuel Teixeira (lawyer, Porto), Innovation
and Intellectual Property;
- 9 June - Presentation and public discussion of students
projects.
In one of the first sessions, students choose a topic for a
project. As a general rule, the projects proposed by the course
co-ordinator are intended for groups of 2 students. However,
this is not strictly enforced, so that students themselves may
propose a topic and/or a different arrangement as regards group
(individual project, or project carried out by more than 2
students). Typically projects involve a critical survey of
available information in literature (books, journals,
magazines) and the INTERNET, as well as some empirical work
(interviews, collecting and analysing data, etc.). The last
session of the course is dedicated to public presentations of
students' projects. The public discussion is carried out using
a data-show equipped room. The presentation involves a concise
presentation of the work performed and main findings.
Discussion of the presentation is made by the course's academic
staff as well as by external visitors.
Further to their specific topics, the actual development of
the projects raise useful questions, such as the problem of
plagiarism when using the WWW - an area where there may be
cases of students having difficulty differentiating between
ethical and unethical behaviour6.
Topics dealt with by students in their 1997/1998 projects
include several topics more or less related with ethical
issues, such as:
- Censorship and INTERNET,
- Databases and the right to privacy,
- Computing crimes,
- Intellectual property,
- as well as a number of other topics of interest for the
social context of Informatics and Computing Engineering such
as tele-work, marketing and electronic commerce.
Ethics and Engineering - one lecture for the 5th (final)
year of the Civil Engineering degree, Civil Constructions
track, course Construction Organisation and Public Works
(Organization da Constructo e Obras Publicas),
(1997/8, 1998/9)
The Civil Engineering degree of FEUP is composed of a common
curriculum until the 4th year, and several optional
tracks in the 5th and final year. Students must choose one of
these tracks (Civil Constructions, Structures, Hydraulics,
etc.). Approximately one third of the students choose Civil
Constructions. The Ethics and Engineering lecture is intended
for these students.
Taking into account this type of students, the lecture is
designed to touch questions of licensing, the role of
professional societies and in particular definition of ethical
codes and provision of support to members in this field. The
safety of workers in civil engineering construction is
addressed, since this is currently an important problem in
Portugal.
The sequence of the presentation is as follows:
- Control of access to certain professions;
- licensing;
- reference to the PE status in the USA.
- Professional associations and their role in the
accreditation of members as being apt for certain
professional activities; concern of professional associations
with the promotion of the profession, and with continuing
education of members.
- The role of professional associations in Portugal; the
case of engineers and civil engineers in particular; contrast
between civil and other types of engineers (such as
mechanical engineers, who typically working as employees in
firms and do not 'need' license status).
- Comparison of codes of ethics of several professional
associations: the Portuguese Ordem dos Engenheiros;
the USA ASME, IEEE and ACM; the code of ethics of the
Pakistan Engineering Council as an example of a code inspired
in religion with several references to the Quran and to
Allah.
- Reference to the education of engineering students. ABET
Engineering Criteria 2000, and Ordem dos Engenheiros
requirements.
- Examples of ethical problems facing engineers in times of
global economy: relativism 'in Rome do as the Romans do';
safety; conflict of interest.
- Increasing number of enterprises and corporations that
adopt their own 'code of ethics'.
Teaching Engineering: Profession and Ethics
One lecture for the course on:
- Teaching Engineering for the academic staff of FEUP
(first offered in 1996)
Taking into account the audience contains many 'academic
staff ' a considerable part of this event is dedicated to
issues specific to academic staff, including teaching,
plagiarism, academic career, tenure and research ethics.
In the light of ABET Engineering Criteria 2000 or the
Ordem dos Engenheiros requirement for reference to
social and ethical problems, this lecture also addresses
strategies for including these types of problems in the
engineering curricula.
The structure of the lecture is:
- Introduction,
- Ethics,
- Codes of ethics; among others:
- ASME,
- Ordem dos Engenheiros,
- AAUP,
- Teacher ethics; teaching ethics,
Some WWW links on professional ethics:
Concluding remarks
Some experiences of addressing ethics issues within
engineering education were mentioned. Once the relevance of
these activities in the engineering curriculum is
established, the comparative discussion of experiences is
necessary. Indeed, there is far less consensus on how to raise
the awareness of engineering students to these issues, than on
how to teach Calculus or Strength of Materials. Some academic
staff believe that it is irrelevant to address these problems
in the engineering curriculum: according to them, it
is only by the ethical attitude of the academic staff and of
the institution that a real contribution to the education of
the students may be made.
Others believe that some more explicit way of addressing the
problem must be found. The author has been associated to issues
of accreditation of engineering degrees in Portugal. More
recently he seats in the Board on Professional Practice and
Ethics of the ASME as representative of Region XIII (members
outside North America). He also represents the Faculdade de
Engenharia da Universidade do Porto in the European Ethics
Network, a thematic network of academics with different
backgrounds but a common interest in ethics issues. The
involvement in these activities, together with professional
practice as an engineering educator and as an engineer,
reinforced a conviction that explicit ethics teaching will make
a positive contribution to the education of future engineers.
Although for younger students perhaps the key to success in
ethics awareness is to focus on academic ethics and integrity
(plagiarism, etc), older, mature students will be interested in
professional ethics. This is in agreement with experiences
elsewhere8.
Back To Top
Paper submitted for presentation at the International
Conference on Ethics in Engineering and Computer Science, March
21-24, 1999, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio,
USA