The SEED Study

The goal of the NSF-Funded SEED (Student Engineering Ethical Development) study is to enact educational reform by identifying the factors which positively affect the ethical development of engineering undergraduates, and then disseminating those results through broad channels. Using its theoretical model, the team is studying three components of ethical development (i.e., knowledge of ethics, ethical reasoning, and ethical behavior) in engineering undergraduates who have experienced various modes of ethical instruction in diverse learning environments.

In partnership with 20 colleges and universities, the team is conducting focus groups and interviews students, faculty, and senior administrators at engineering programs around the country. In these focus groups and interviews, the team is collecting data to learn about curricular and extracurricular experiences associated with ethics instruction at each institution and to determine the range of student characteristics and institutional culture that exist.

The team is now combining this information with variables of its model of ethical development to develop the SEED (Student Engineering Ethical Development) Survey to assess the impact of educational experiences and student context. After pilot testing the survey, the team will administer the survey to more than 4,000 engineering undergraduates at all class levels at 19 diverse institutions nationwide. Testing of the survey will occur in the summer of 2009, and the full survey administration will be in spring of 2010.

The team is confident that this analysis will ultimately identify the curricular and extra-curricular activities that have the most profound influence on the ethical development of current engineering students. Subsequent research will further elucidate the effect these successful activities have on students and will develop best practices for teaching ethical decision-making.

The SEED Study

Bucknell University
California Polytechnic State University
The Cooper Union
Iowa State University
Lawrence Technological University
Michigan Technological University
Missouri University of Science and Technology
North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University
North Dakota State University
Ohio Northern University
Penn State University
Purdue University
Rose Hulman Institute of Technology
San Diego State University
Tennessee Tech University
University of California-San Diego
University of Michigan
University of North Carolina-Charlotte
University of Texas
University of Wisconsin-Platteville