2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The aim of this study is to investigate how ethical dilemma case studies constructed with entrepreneurial mindset constructs in upper-level chemical engineering courses influence the development of the ethical decision-making process and how this complexity of the human factor and self-efficacy can be reflected in pre and post assessment via a Likert scale survey and reflective journals.
The development of abilities for societal decision-making has received little attention from engineering educators, who have prioritized teaching technical skills. Educators must choose the best content, methodology, curricular models, and outcome evaluation techniques to integrate ethics into the curriculum. Conversations on ethics in engineering are typically guided by the National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE) Code of Ethics but they are often not realistic to the workplace where an individual faces contrasting demands. Entrepreneurial mindset (EM) and ethical dilemmas are more commonly associated with other fields like business, philosophy, and medicine (especially the latter) however, they hold much value in engineering education and practice. Students learn and develop ethical decision making through active thinking about ethical dilemmas; progressing from preconventional (least developed), to conventional, to post-conventional (most developed) levels of moral reasoning. An ethical dilemma is a conflict between alternatives, where choosing any of them will lead to a compromise of some ethical principle and lead to an ethical violation. Entrepreneurship and corporate social responsibility, which are closely tied to entrepreneurial mindset, analyze common needs, economic issues, and social issues to improve society's quality. The introduction of the EM framework in an ethical decision-making dilemma suggests a pluralistic framework for structuring the chemical engineering curriculum by adapting concepts and situations studied in business and social studies degrees to an engineering setting to create an applicable, critical interdisciplinary and reflective curriculum.
In this study, upper-level chemical engineering students' written reflections on ethical dilemmas (250 words per reflection) will be grouped according to three types of possible outcomes: client-based, company-based, and innovative based on their answers to corporate social dilemmas. Students will have a pre/post survey to determine what type of moral reasoning they adopt when they face an ethical dilemma. Students will be presented with an ethical decision-making scenario and answer it based on their own individuality. In class, they will discuss in groups and decide based on the group's consent. The reflections will be compared to verify any changes in perspective in addressing the dilemma. The EM component to this activity is not only mimicking decision-making situations as entrepreneurs, but it also includes the discussion of the entrepreneurial mindset framework to either encourage or solidify their self-efficacy. Their self-efficacy can be determined by a focus interview with 2-3 upper-level students from each of the collaborating chemical engineering institutions.
We are particularly interested in knowing the percentage of students who demonstrated post-conventional reasoning. This study is expected to close this ethical decision-making development gap by introducing concepts and situations studied in business and social studies degrees and adapted to an engineering setting as part of the chemical engineering curriculum. The impact of this study could shape the discussion in ethics and ethical decision making used by chemical engineering educators and chemical engineering employees other than simply engineering economics and quality control optional courses. The introduction of entrepreneurial mindset learning strategies to the chemical engineering curriculum can be seamless and have a great impact on student’s self-efficacy.