BME7900 Seminar: Cynthia Finelli (Michigan)

Description

Educating Ethical (and Socially Responsible!) Engineers

In today’s society, the need to graduate engineers who are conscious of their ethical and professional responsibilities is more important than ever. This is especially difficult given the current media environment that publicizes reports of algorithmic bias, drone-based surveillance, and emissions falsification (among other issues) but provides few positive role models for students. While engineering programs have made significant strides to incorporate ethics instruction into the engineering curriculum, there is little evidence about which approaches best prepare students to address the ethical challenges they will face in the workforce. In this session, Dr. Finelli will present research about the state of undergraduate ethics instruction and its long term impact and offer some evidence-based approaches to better educate ethical engineers.
 

Bio:
Cynthia Finelli is a professor of electrical engineering and computer science and director of the engineering education research program at the University of Michigan. She is currently studying instructional practices to improve students’ sense of social responsibility, factors that influence the success of college students with ADHD, and faculty adoption of evidence-based teaching practices. She also led a project to develop a taxonomy for the field of engineering education and was part of a team that studied ethical decision-making in engineering students. Prof. Finelli is the founding director of the Center for Research and Learning in Engineering at Michigan, which supports college-wide initiatives in engineering teaching and learning.