2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Abstract for submission to LEES Division, ASEE 2026, Work In Progress

Since the 1990s, engineering educators have increasingly incorporated design education into their undergraduate engineering curricula, most commonly integrated through first year design and a culminating “capstone” design experience. Program builders often justify this focus on design by claiming engineering students should be educated as both technical problem-solvers and social and ethical agents and ABET Student Outcomes 2-5 reinforce the importance of such education. Recently, a senior design project at a prestigious engineering school was cancelled due to ethical concerns resulting from the direct manipulation of student work. While the cultural norms and ideologies of engineering and their impacts often remain unseen and unnoticed by most engineering students and educators, the processes prior to, during, and after this project cancellation render visible several facets of the previously occluded social structures of engineering. Such unprecedented circumstances present a unique, novel opportunity to study the influence of engineering’s normative structure(s) on students’ understanding of their ethical duties and subsequent implications for their perceptions of ethics training provided during their education. This paper analyzes data surrounding students’ experiences with the cancelled project and their reflections on how their undergraduate education has prepared them ethically to conceive of and navigate such a situation. Data collection includes semi-structured ethnographic interviews and participant observation amongst the undergraduate students that comprised the senior design team. Interviews were transcribed and transcripts have been coded thematically to analyze how participants worked through the dilemma and how they continue to make sense of their engineering identities as they transitioned to new senior design projects. This paper will synthesize data related to team members’ understanding of their experiences of the dilemma and their associated ethical responsibilities as engineers to present findings related to the presence, (in)visibility, and significance of engineering ideologies and cultures—specifically those related to technical/social dualism and depoliticization—and their influence on team members’ ethical capacities. It concludes with suggestions for how educators can improve engineering curriculum to better equip students with necessary skills and mindsets for navigating ethical dilemmas they might experience throughout their professional careers.