2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Engineering Capabilities for Ethical Development: Bridging Philosophy, Pedagogy, and Professional Practice

Presented at Engineering Ethics Division (ETHICS) Technical Session 5

Abstract. Engineering ethics education teaches students to notice ethical problems and reason out solutions but typically stops short of preparing them to transform their decisions into actions. Students who deliver thoughtful analyses in class often go quiet when the same conflicts surface in pressurized professional settings. We call this the reason-action gap. It persists because dominant pedagogies treat ethics as a cognitive problem and leave the structural, social, and affective conditions of action largely untouched. This Work in Progress paper has three aims: (1) to locate the gap in the conversion factors that allow moral knowledge to function in context rather than in individual moral failure; (2) to operationalize a framework that treats ethical readiness as a set of combined capabilities developed by individuals and institutions together; and (3) to report formative evidence on whether targeted instruction influence proximal indicators of ethical intent and implementation. The framework, the Capabilities Approach to Professional Ethical Readiness (CAPER), integrates Rest's four-component model of moral functioning with the Capability Approach developed by Sen and Nussbaum and tested in higher education by Walker and McLean. Across three sections of a required undergraduate engineering ethics course (n = 84), pre-post measures showed student gains in ethical voice self-efficacy (d = 0.78), perceived utility value of ethical practice (d = 0.46), behavioral intention to act (d = 0.61), and scenario-based ethical action (d = 0.67). Reflections also shifted from abstract principle to behavioral realism, with students increasingly naming hierarchy, peer dynamics, and interpersonal friction as the actual terrain of ethical work. The pattern is preliminary but consistent with the framework, and it suggests that intent and implementation are tractable instructional targets when ethics education is designed around conditions of action rather than transmission of content.

Authors

Dr. Jesse Pappas University of Virginia [biography]

Jesse Pappas is Assistant Professor of Engineering and Society in the School of Engineering and Applied Science. As one of the only social psychologists in the U.S. with a full-time appointment in engineering, he works at the intersection of individual experience and sociotechnical systems. Jesse currently teaches STS 2600: Engineering Ethics and serves as co-director of UVA's Engineering Character Strength Initiative (sponsored by the Lilly Endowment) and West Point's Character Assessment Planning Initiative (sponsored by the John Templeton Foundation). He has a long record of interdisciplinarity and an affinity for longitudinal research he developed as a fellow of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development. Jesse's work has been featured in places like Social Psychology Quarterly, Journal of Personality, International Journal of Engineering Education, and the Journal of Cleaner Production. Off grounds, he is father of two, husband to one, and an inveterate dilettante. For instance, he is cofounder of The Lupulin Exchange, a peer-to-peer hops marketplace that powers the North American craft brewing industry.
Dr. Rosalyn W. Berne University of Virginia [biography]

Rosalyn W. Berne, Ph.D. is the Olsson Professor of Applied Ethics in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at the University of Virginia, and Chair of the Department of Engineering and Society. She also co-directs the Online Ethics Center for Engineering and Science (OEC). As a scholar, Berne explores the intersecting realms of emerging technologies, science, fiction, and myth, and the links between the human and non-human worlds. Published under her name are three academic books; a science fiction novel; two award-winning books in the genre of body-mind-spirit, and numerous papers and articles. On leave from UVA from 2009 to 2011, she served as Vice President for Academic Affairs for the Institute for Shipboard Education. On leave from 2018 to 2020, she served as Director of the Center for Engineering Ethics and Society at the National Academy of Engineering. Professor Berne serves on the ethics committee of the American Society for Engineering Education; on the Engineering Change Lab - USA Communication & Outreach Committee; and on the Board of the National Institute for Engineering Ethics. She is an emerita advisor to the “Engineering One Planet” project of the Lemelson Foundation and emerita advisor to the Kern Family Foundation KEEN project: “Educating the Whole Engineer.” She is currently PI of the Engineering Character Strength Initiative funded by Wake Forest's Educating Character Initiative.

Note

The full paper will be available to logged in and registered conference attendees once the conference starts on June 21, 2026, and to all visitors after the conference ends on June 24, 2026

« View session

For those interested in:

2 Year Institution
Advocacy and Policy
engineering
professional
undergraduate