Role of Ethics in the Life of an Engineering Student
As a college student for the last 2 years, if there is one important thing that I have learned, it is to follow the ethical guidelines of your school. Moreover, maintain the ethical code throughout the semester and more specifically for every course. Now, as an engineering student at The University of Texas at Tyler, I have an Engineering Code of Ethics to follow. This, in my opinion, is the closest to an actual professional code I have seen thus far. As a learned profession, engineering students are expected to show the upmost standards of integrity and honesty.
Since this is the code that we will be following while providing services as an engineer, our complete honesty & fairness should be dedicated to the safety and welfare of the people. As an engineer, you are required to perform under a standard of professional behavior. It requires adherence to the highest principles of ethical conduct. As students, we are to practice the Code of Ethics on both the college and the District level. Every student in the college/district is expected to represent himself respectfully, whether it is on paper or verbal.
This representation calls for honesty of information on all forms, applications and official documentation. In addition, we are to behave respectfully faculty, staff, administrators, other students and visitors as we represent our college and district. Academic honesty and academic integrity are to be maintained at their highest standards. All of the student’s work should be original. No type of academic dishonesty is acceptable. This includes cheating or lying on any assignment, quiz or exam. Providing false information or making false statements is impermissible.
Gaining an unfair advantage over other students by any means of cheating is also against the ethical conduct. Cheating furthermore includes plagiarism, which is when a student uses the ideas of another and declares it as his or her own. Students are required to properly cite the original source of the ideas and information used in his or her work. Students of the district are expected to adhere to the rules and regulations set by the District. Students are to be responsible for any costs of the damages resulting from their behavior.
Furthermore, use of illegal drugs, prescription drugs and alcohol should be highly avoided. We shall also refrain from using language or acting in a manner that is disrespectful or inappropriate towards other students and members of college. This also includes sexual assault and harassment. Students must behave respectfully toward their peers and professors. In the classroom setting, students may not interrupt their classmates or professor, make fun of them or their expressed views, or disrupt the learning environment.
It is important to maintain the best learning environment for all students and professors. The fundamental canons lay down general duties. For example, engineers are required to “hold paramount the safety, health and welfare of the public,” to “issue public statements only in an objective and truthful manner,” to “act in professional matters for each employer or client as faithful agents and trustees,” and to “avoid all conflicts of interest. ” Each engineer stands to benefit from these requirements both as ordinary person and as engineer.
The benefits for an engineer as ordinary person are obvious: As an ordinary person, an engineer is likely to be safer, healthier, and otherwise better off if engineers generally hold paramount the public safety, only make truthful public statements, and so on. How engineers stand to benefit as engineers is less obvious . Generally, all the ideas from the Code of Ethics for Engineers apply to an engineering student. Two fundamental canons that stand out are number 3 and 6. Number 3 states that public statements issued should be in an objective and truthful manner.
This means that all reports and statements from an engineer should include all relevant and pertinent information in such reports, statements, or testimony, which should bear the date indicating when it was current. The same way an engineering student is responsible for stating correct information on his/her assignments and reports with the mention of the correct date and time of any analysis or experimentation involved. Number 6 states the engineer conduct themselves honorably, ethically, and lawfully so as to enhance the honor, reputation, and usefulness of the profession.
This applies to engineering students as much because we are responsible for our own work and are expected to incorporate originality in our work. We should acknowledge our errors and shall not alter or distort the facts. We, as students, should look at the big picture and realize the long-term commitment to the field of engineering. Misrepresentation of any kind is unacceptable. A code of ethics is necessary in part because, without it, the self-interest of individual engineers, or even their selfless devotion to their employer, could lead them to harm everyone overall.
The authors of a code of engineering ethics are all more or less rational persons. They differ from most other rational persons only in knowing what engineers must know in order to be engineers and in performing duties they could not perform but for that knowledge. It is therefore reasonable to suppose that their code of ethics would not require them to risk their own safety, health, or welfare, or that of anyone for whom they care, except for some substantial good.
It also seems reasonable to suppose that no code they authored would include anything people generally consider immoral. Most engineers are probably morally decent people, unlikely to endorse an immoral rule. All scientific and engineering professions have a high standard of ethics. It is quite necessary, because many of the things scientists and engineers do affect both their own lives and those of the public as well. If a scientist reports a development from the laboratory incorrectly, it can even endanger someone’s life. If an engineer cheats on a design, it can also cost lives.
Similarly, all of us would be concerned about driving over a bridge built by an engineer who cheated in school. We have learned of a number of situations in recent years in which people have acted unethically and the results have been very bad for the people who trusted them. This is also the reason why new disciplines of engineering ethics are emerging all over colleges and universities. Handouts and instructor’s guides in different courses in the electrical, civil and mechanical engineering departments are made mandatory to a student to have a good sense of.
Understanding the Code of Ethics for Engineers as a convention between professionals, we can explain why engineers cannot depend on mere private conscience when choosing how to practice their profession, no matter how good that private conscience and why engineers should take into account what an organization of engineers has to say about what engineers should do. What conscience would tell us to do absent a certain convention is not necessarily what conscience would tell us given that convention.
Insofar as a code of professional ethics is a kind of a morally permissible convention, it provides a guide to what engineers may reasonably expect of one another. It describes what the rules of the game are. Just as we must know the rules of baseball to know what to do with the ball, so we must know engineering ethics to know, for example, whether, as engineers, we should merely weigh safety against the wishes of our employer or instead give safety preference over those wishes. A code of ethics should also provide a guide to what we may expect other members of our profession to help us do
The question now is why, all things considered, an engineer should obey her profession’s code. We should begin by dismissing two alternatives some people find plausible. The obligations of an engineer do not seem to rest on anything so contingent as a promise, oath, or vow. So, the convention between professionals is not a contract. It is more like an obligation resting not on an actual agreement, but on what it is fair to require of someone given what he has voluntarily done, such as accepted the benefits that go with claiming to be an engineer.
One way society has of saying things is through law. No law binds all engineers to abide by their profession’s code. Of course, society has ways of saying things other than by law, for example, by public opinion. But it seems doubtful that the public knows enough about engineering to have an opinion on most matters of engineering ethics. After all, there have been both irrational laws, those requiring the use of outmoded techniques and immoral laws, those enforcing slavery. The public opinion supporting such laws could not have been much less irrational or immoral than the laws themselves.
In conclusion, Engineers should not only do as their profession’s code requires, but should also support it less directly by encouraging others to do as it requires and by criticizing, ostracizing, or otherwise calling to account those who do not. They should support their profession’s code in these ways for at least four reasons: First, engineers should support their profession’s code because supporting it will help protect them and those they care about from being injured by what other engineers do.
Second, supporting the code will also help assure each engineer a working environment in which it will be easier than it would otherwise be to resist pressure to do much that the engineer would rather not do. Third, engineers should support their profession’s code because supporting it helps make their profession a practice of which they need not feel morally justified embarrassment, shame, or guilt. And fourth, one has an obligation of fairness to do his part insofar as he claims to be an engineer and other engineers are doing their part in generating these benefits for all engineers.
