2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Board 240: Developing Critically Conscious Aerospace Engineers through Macroethics Curricula: Year 1

Presented at NSF Grantees Poster Session

Absent from the undergraduate aerospace curricula at many universities is any acknowledgement of macroethics, the ways in which engineering impacts society positively and negatively. Without putting aerospace engineering in its social context, students are left ill-prepared to recognize and address challenging ethical questions and issues they will encounter in their future engineering careers. Alternatively, aerospace engineering curricula should support the development of the critical consciousness required to reflect on the social impact of the field and students’ present and future roles within it. We are addressing this pressing need with integrated research and curriculum development. Our multi-institutional team is composed of aerospace and engineering education research faculty, graduate students in engineering education, undergraduate students in engineering, and practitioners in the aerospace industry. The overarching objective of our design-based research project is to investigate how a macroethical curriculum can be effectively integrated into aerospace engineering science courses. To do this, we ask two research questions to inform the curriculum: RQ1) What are undergraduate students’ current awareness and perceptions of macroethical issues in aerospace engineering?, and RQ2) In what ways do students feel their education is or is not preparing them to address macroethical issues? We also pose a question to assess our curriculum: RQ3) How does the macroethical curriculum impact students’ perceptions and awareness of macroethical issues and their desire to engage with the macroethical implications of their future work? In this poster, we will describe the development and iteration of macroethics lessons in multiple aerospace engineering courses, along with an assessment of the lessons through instructor reflections and quantitative student feedback. We will also describe the development of a survey to conduct quantitative and qualitative analyses of students’ awareness and perception of macroethical issues in aerospace engineering. We will also present preliminary results of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses.

Authors

Dr. Aaron W. Johnson University of Michigan [biography]

Aaron W. Johnson (he/him) is an Assistant Professor in the Aerospace Engineering Department and a Core Faculty member of the Engineering Education Research Program at the University of Michigan. His lab’s design-based research focuses on how to re-contextualize engineering science engineering courses to better reflect and prepare students for the reality of ill-defined, sociotechnical engineering practice. Their current projects include studying and designing classroom interventions around macroethical issues in aerospace engineering and the productive beginnings of engineering judgment as students create and use mathematical models. Aaron holds a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from U-M, and a Ph.D. in Aeronautics and Astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Prior to re-joining U-M, he was an instructor in Aerospace Engineering Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder.
Dr. Corin L. Bowen http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0910-8902 California State University, Los Angeles [biography]

Corin (Corey) Bowen is an Assistant Professor of Engineering Education, housed in the Department of Civil Engineering at California State University - Los Angeles. Her engineering education research focuses on structural oppression in engineering systems, organizing for equitable change, and developing an agenda of Engineering for the Common Good. She teaches structural mechanics and sociotechnical topics in engineering education and practice. Corey conferred her Ph.D. in aerospace engineering from the University of Michigan - Ann Arbor in April 2021; her thesis included both technical and educational research. She also holds an M.S.E. in aerospace engineering from the University of Michigan - Ann Arbor and a B.S.E. in civil engineering from Case Western Reserve University, both in the areas of structural engineering and solid mechanics.
Ms. Elizabeth Ann Strehl University of Michigan [biography]

Elizabeth is a graduate student at the University of Michigan studying Engineering Education Research under doctoral advisor Aaron Johnson. Her research focuses on weaving macro ethics into existing aerospace engineering curricula and institutional support methods for working class engineering students. Elizabeth earned her undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan in 2019 with foci in Biomedical Engineering and Applied Mathematics.
Sabrina Olson University of Michigan [biography]

Sabrina Olson is an aerospace PhD pre-candidate at the University of Michigan. She holds degrees in both aerospace engineering and engineering management, and has taught as a lecturer at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo. These experiences have led her to seek out a research pathway at the intersection of macroethics, space systems design, and engineering education. She is jointly advised by Dr. Oliver Jia-Richards and Dr. Aaron Johnson at the University of Michigan.
Ricardo Elias California State University, Los Angeles

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