Tag / responsibility

by shannonchance

Above and Beyond: Ethics and Responsibility in Civil Engineering

A recent cover from the Australasian Journal of Engineering Education.

It’s been a long time coming, but a study I’ve been working on since the fall of 2018 has finally resulted in a publication–the first of several, I hope!

The article “Above and Beyond: Ethics and Responsibility in Civil Engineering” was released digitally this week, by the Australasian Journal of Engineering Education.

The publication process is often slow and suspense-ridden. I submitted the first draft of this paper at the start of March 2020, and now, just 15.75 months later, we’re nearly in print! The first step is digital release, and paper copies will come later.

Chance, S., R. Lawlor, I. Direito, and J. Mitchell. 2021. “Above and Beyond: Ethics and Responsibility in Civil Engineering.” Australasian Journal of Engineering Education. [Taylor & Francis Online]

University College London paid the Open Access publication free, so that you can download and read this article for FREE, without any special library access. My co-authors and I started this project at the request of Engineers without Borders UK, as the organization’s CEO, Katie Cresswell-Maynard, wanted to assess engineers’ perceptions and experiences related to “global responsibility”.

We prepared this specific report in response to a call for papers on ethics in engineering education and practice. To support the study of ethics, extracted data from our interviews that had to do with the topic, and studied it for patterns. As such, we’ve called this an exploratory study, on a topic where little prior research has been done.

Here’s the abstract:

This exploratory study investigates how nine London-based civil engineers have enacted ‘global responsibility’ and how their efforts involve ethics and professionalism. The study assesses moral philosophies related to ethics, as well as professional engineering bodies’ visions, accreditation standards, and requirements for continuing professional development. Regarding ethics, the study questions where the line falls between what an engineer ‘must do’ and what ‘would be good to do’. Although the term ethics did not spring to mind when participants were asked about making decisions related to global responsibility, participants’ concern for protecting the environment and making life better for people did, nonetheless, demonstrate clear ethical concern. Participants found means and mandates for protecting the health and safety of construction workers to be clearer than those for protecting society and the natural environment. Specific paths for reporting observed ethical infringements were not always clear. As such, analyses suggest that today’s shared sense of professional duty and obligation may be too limited to achieve goals set by engineering professional bodies and the United Nations. Moreover, although professional and educational accreditation standards have traditionally embedded ethics within sustainability, interviews indicate sustainability is a construct embedded within ethics.  

I want to wholeheartedly thank the research participants and the co-authors who stuck by my side and helped see this project to fruition. It was great to have an ethicist on board in authoring this paper, Dr. Rob Lawlor. It has been a joy to work with him, and with Dr. Inês Direito and Professor John Mitchell, throughout this project. We also enjoyed a helpful and astute advisory panel comprised of Professor Nick Tyler, Jon Pritchard, Dr. Rob Lawlor, and Katie Cresswell-Maynard. The study was supported financially by a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions fellowship from the European Union (H2020-MSCA-IF-2016, Project 747069, DesignEng), with additional support provided to Engineers without Borders UK by the Royal Academy of Engineers.

I hope you’ll enjoy reading the article and will find it helpful.

by shannonchance

Echelons of Third Space

The Cobblestone made complimentary mention of an earlier blog on “third spaces,” so I’ve decided it’s time to write the sequel I promised.

A couple of weeks ago, after sequestering myself in my apartment for two days to write, I need a brief respite and some healthy food.  I headed to Third Space–Cafe and Social Space on the nearby Smithfield Plaza.

After placing an order at the counter, I realized I’d forgotten my wallet.  You see, I’d given a new purse a whirl the day before and accidentally left every cent in that handbag rather than the one I now carried.

The young man behind the counter could have easily cancelled the order.  He’d probably not even hit the enter key at that point.  But instead he said, “It’s okay.  You’ve been here before. You can pay later.”

Wow!  I’d been there twice.  Once was with Esther about four days prior.

This guy had rendered excellent service on that outing–and that was one reason I returned again so soon.

Now I’d normally have trouble accepting such an act of kindness, for fear something might go wrong.  But this time I admitted to myself that his was a much better option than trudging home hungry–particularly when I had so much to do.

So I stayed put and enjoyed a tasty slice of quiche with a side of grilled vegetables.

While eating, I devised a plan that required asking for more leeway than the kind cashier had actually offered.  When I got up to leave, I approached him and asked, “Is it okay if I come back to pay tomorrow morning? That way I can get breakfast while I’m here.  Will you be working tomorrow?”

He said yes and indicated the plan was acceptable. And I went on my merry way.

At home, I made sure to set an iPhone reminder.  I wouldn’t run the risk forgetting a responsibility as important as this.

I arrived back at Third Space around 8:30 the next morning.  After greeting the cashiers, I ordered a “mini veg” and asked to pay for both meals. The young woman who was ringing me up thanked me for returning to pay. And the young man was visibly relieved to see me.

“Isn’t it nice that we can trust each other?” he asked.

Yes, it surely is!

The Third Space offers shelves of books and an upper tier where the sign says, “here, it’s okay to talk to strangers.”

I must say, though, that he had to extend much more trust than I, since I know I’ll certainly follow through!  But what let him know I would?

In my mind, there was no way I would ever shake his faith in humanity by not meeting our agreement.  Such breaches have happened to me before, and the scars have left me far less generous to strangers than I’d like to be. But this particular story has a happy ending.

This young man has provided a glorious example of generosity.  He has demonstrated what a true “third space” is all about.

The website of the place he works, the “Third Space–Cafe and Social Space” claims that the founders wanted to provide a comfortable space for all, where people could feel included without having to spend much money.  This example proved to me that they have succeeded.