Infusing Ethics Across the Curriculum in Biological Engineering: Background, Process, and Initial Results - Paper Focus

Oct 15, 2026

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Engineering ethics requires learning experiences integrated across the curriculum rather than isolated course-level activities. This paper documents a faculty-driven process for infusing ethics into an undergraduate biological engineering curriculum, describing program-level ethics learning objectives, the ethics course sequence, and the design, implementation, and assessment of an ethics module in a junior biochemistry and microbiology course. The work-in-progress highlights strategies, faculty engagement, and sustained leadership support needed for program-wide change.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages12

Reading Time30 min

AccessFree to download

Abstract

Introduction

Conceptual Frameworks

(Methods and Module Assessment)

| | Ad | vances in Engineering Edu | cation | | | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | SUMMER 2020 Infusing Ethics Across the Curriculum in Biological Engineering: Background, Process, and Initial Results XIAOFENG TANG Tsinghua University Beijing, China JEFFREY M. CATCHMARK EDUARDO MENDIETA THOMAS A. LITZINGER The Pennsylvania State University University Park, PA ABSTRACT To meet complex ethical challenges in the engineering profession, students need ethics learning experiences that are integrated systematically across the engineering curriculum. Sustaining systematic changes in the engineering curriculum also calls for processes that respect and engage the engineering faculty. This paper reports the work to date of creating a faculty-driven process for infusing ethics across an undergraduate biological engineering curriculum. To illustrate this emerging change process, we report the generation of program level ethics learning objectives, the identification of an ethics course sequence, and the design, implementation, and assessment of an ethics module in a junior engineering biochemistry and microbiology course. Our project to date highlights a number of lessons for enabling a change process for program-wide ethics education in engineering. These lessons include strategies for disrupting existing curriculum patterns and encouraging novel ideas, engaging the faculty adopters of new curriculum, as well as seeking and maintaining leadership and support for ethics education in the discipline. Key words: Change Strategies, Ethics, Engineering Curriculum, Student Assessment INTRODUCTION Most undergraduate engineering programs in the United States have included some form of ethics instruction in their curricula (Colby and Sullivan 2008) . Yet, with a few notable exceptions, the ethics contents and learning activities are largely designed at the individual course level, often at the discretion SUMMER 2020 1 ADVANCES IN ENGINEERING EDUCATION Infusing Ethics Across the Curriculum in Biological Engineering: Background, Process, and Initial Results of instructors. To adequately prepare engineering students for complex ethical challenges they will face in the profession, we need to provide ethics learning experiences that are integrated systematically across the engineering curriculum. While literature in engineering ethics and ethics education suggests goals and pedagogical strategies for ethics across the curriculum, achieving sustained ethics learning in engineering programs also requires a transferrable process that can enable and inform holistic changes in curriculum, assessment, and instruction. How then, can educators facilitate changes required in engineering programs to integrate ethics, a subject that is often considered outside the traditional technical core of engineering education, across an undergraduate engineering curriculum? What does it take to promote collective rethinking of ethics education in an entire undergraduate engineering curriculum governed by its faculty members? Seeking answers to these challenges, the authors of this paper participated in a workshop on “Overcoming Challenges to Infusing Ethics into the Development of Engineers”organized by the National Academy of Engineering Center for Engineering Ethics and Society in January 2017. The project we proposed for the workshop was to infuse ethics across an undergraduate biological engineering curriculum at the Pennsylvania State University (“Penn State” hereafter) . As education researchers, we also set out to study the process of curriculum development and implementation with the goal of achieving a “model process” for curricular changes, one that can be used for designing and implementing curriculum-wide ethics education in other engineering programs. It is within this context we report this work-in-progress to the greater engineering education community, to share our findingsand challeng

FAQs

Why does the paper emphasize integrating ethics across the engineering curriculum?

To address complex ethical challenges in the profession, students need ethics learning experiences systematically integrated rather than largely designed at the individual course level.

What does the paper report about the curriculum change process?

It reports the creation of program-level ethics learning objectives, identification of an ethics course sequence, and design, implementation, and assessment of an ethics module in a junior course.

What enables sustained ethics curriculum change according to the authors?

A transferrable process that engages and respects faculty involvement, combined with strategies to disrupt existing curriculum patterns and maintain leadership support for ethics education in the discipline.

Oct 15, 2026

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