Robert McGinn is currently the Professor of Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management and, by courtesy, of Civil Engineering (Teaching) and Acting Chair of the Science, Technology, and Society Program in the school of Engineering at Stanford University. His B.S. degree was in the Unified Sciences and Engineering Curriculum at Stevens Institute of Technology, his M.S. at Stanford was in mathematics, and his Ph.D. at Stanford in philosophy and humanities. His two academic speacialties are technology and society and ethics and technology.
Professor McGinn teaches two courses that reflect the first of these interests: "Science, Technology, and Contemporary Society" and, for the IEEM Department, "Work, Technology, and Society." He is currently tutoring several students writing senior honors theses on topics such as policy regarding the restriction of pornography on the Internet and the effects of new communications technologies on the work of engineers in Silicon Valley. His Science, Technology, and Society was published by Prentice Hall in 1991.
His second major interest is reflected in three other courses he teaches, "Ethics and Public Policy," "Ethical Issues in Engineering," and, for the first time this spring, for the CE Department, "Ethical Issues in Civil Engineering."
In terms of research, Professor McGinn is currently working to develop a series of socio-technically rich case studies of ethical issues in engineering, especially ones that do not involve dramatic whistle-blowing episodes. He looks forward to publishing a case book containing these materials sometime in the next few years. He believes that there is a need for such materials and hopes that his projected book will be of use to colleagues teaching such courses around the country. His most recent publications having to do with ethics and technology in general and ethical issues in engineering in particular are "Technology, Demography, and the Anachronism of Traditional Rights," Journal of Applied Philosophy, Vol. 11, No. 1, 1994, pp. 57-70, and "The Engineer's Moral Right to Reputational Fairness," Science and Engineering Ethics, Vol. 1, Issue 3, 1995, pp. 217-230.