2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The construction industry is one of the largest sectors in the United States, comprising over 680,000 employers and more than seven million workers, according to the Associated General Contractors of America. Construction companies have expanded their roles into design, renovation, maintenance, supply chain management, and demolition, creating increasingly complex projects from both technical and managerial perspectives. As a result, ethical awareness is critical, as decisions made by project participants can have significant impacts on local communities and the environment. The industry's complexity—driven by the involvement of various professionals such as architects, engineers, contractors, and government agencies—makes managing projects with integrity and compliance a challenge. Additionally, globalization and environmental concerns have led to ethical dilemmas requiring sensitive economic, social, and environmental resolutions. This paper addresses the need to strengthen ethics education for construction engineering and management students, with a particular focus on understanding the perspectives of three key groups: students, educators, and industry professionals. By conducting surveys with these groups, we aim to identify gaps between academic training and the ethical challenges encountered in the field. These surveys will inform our conclusions on how ethics education can be improved to better prepare students for the ethical complexities of professional practice. Our findings will be directly linked to the proposed methods for enhancing ethics education, which include case-based learning, interdisciplinary collaboration, and the integration of global and sustainability issues into the curriculum. By aligning the perspectives of students, educators, and professionals, this research seeks to provide actionable recommendations for improving ethics education in construction engineering and management programs, ensuring that graduates are better equipped to navigate the ethical challenges of a globalized and increasingly complex industry.