An Academic-Industry Partnership for Preparing the Next Generation of Ethical Engineers for Professional Practice

In light of both social and ABET expectations, engineering educators need to consider how to effectively infuse engineering ethics education into current engineering curricula. This article describes our initial efforts in that realm. We considered how to improve ethics education in engineering through establishing an academic-industry partnership, which facilitated conversation between engineering faculty members and practicing engineers in industry. We formed a College-level Ethics Advisory Council with representation from industry partners across all 13 engineering departments in Purdue's College of Engineering. As the first official activity, we held an Ethics Advisory Council Workshop to define common goals and share mutual expectations for long-term relationships. This article shares some basic information about the academic-industry partnership and outputs from the Ethics Advisory Council Workshop. We also discuss lessons we learned from the initial work on the partnership, including limitations and other considerations important for potential adopters of such a strategy at their institution. This article can provide insights to engineering educators who are interested in adopting the academic-industry partnership approach to facilitate direct conversations between academia and industry, especially for better engineering ethics education.