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Comparison of Engagement with Ethics Between an Engineering and a Business Program

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Abstract

Increasing university students’ engagement with ethics is becoming a prominent call to action for higher education institutions, particularly professional schools like business and engineering. This paper provides an examination of student attitudes regarding ethics and their perceptions of ethics coverage in the curriculum at one institution. A particular focus is the comparison between results in the business college, which has incorporated ethics in the curriculum and has been involved in ethics education for a longer period, with the engineering college, which is in the nascent stages of developing ethics education in its courses. Results show that student attitudes and perceptions are related to the curriculum. In addition, results indicate that it might be useful for engineering faculty to use business faculty as resources in the development of their ethics curricula.

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Acknowledgments

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. (NSF/EESE#0832852). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

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Correspondence to Steven M. Culver.

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Culver, S.M., Puri, I.K., Wokutch, R.E. et al. Comparison of Engagement with Ethics Between an Engineering and a Business Program. Sci Eng Ethics 19, 585–597 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-011-9346-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-011-9346-3

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