After a concise description of the author's institution, reference is made to engineering education and profession in Portugal. The role of the Portuguese professional association of engineers - Ordem dos Engenheiros is described. Some experiences of addressing ethics topics in engineering education in Portugal are then presented and discussed.
Topics to be dealt with in the 1999 International Conference on Ethics in Engineering and Computer Science include: International perspectives on means of supporting responsible engineering practice and on education and continuing education in ethics in engineering; Effective and engaging ëactive-learning' classroom activities for fostering the proficiency in engineering ethics; Comprehensive plans for engineering ethics education to foster such proficiency; Using field work and service learning in programs of professional ethics; The latest thinking and initiatives of the engineering and scientific professional societies and of ethically proactive employers of engineers, scientists, and computer scientists; What has been learned about how best to foster and support responsible practice in industry via programs of education, mediation, and advice and via formal and informal complaint channels; New scholarship on professional responsibility in engineering and computer science, including cases and analyses of moral change in engineering and science. The present contribution is mainly concerned with the first item of this list. It describes experiences in which the author has been involved. Taking into account the international character of this conference, it seems adequate to start by giving a concise description of the author's own institution - the Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto (FEUP), and of general issues of engineering education in Portugal. The following topics will be addressed in sequence:
Interest in ethics issues within FEUP; Examples of initiatives with an explicit ethics content: Social Aspects of Computing and semester long course in the 4th year of the 5 year degree inlicenciatura - in Informatics and Computing Engineering; Ethics and Engineering in one lecture for the 5th (final) year of the Civil Engineering licenciatura degree; Teaching Engineering: Profession and Ethics one lecture for the course on Teaching Engineering for the academic staff of FEUP.
The Universidade do Porto; the Faculdade de Engenharia and The Universidade do Porto was founded in 1911, by legislation that created two new universities besides the already existing Universidade de Coimbra, one of the oldest in Europe. The history of the Universidade do Porto is directly related to the local social and economic environment and the aspirations of the city inhabitants. The university's origins can be traced to the Nautical School created in 1762 and the Drawing and Design School (1779), both created upon request of the traders of Porto. In 1911 the university was created as the confederation of schools of higher education already in existence in the 19th century: the Polytechnic Academy (1837) and the School of Medicine and Surgery (1836).
Three faculties were instituted in 1911: Sciences (with an affiliated School of Engineering), Medicine, and Commerce. Today the university is composed of 14 schools, which award licenciatura (licenciate, a 5 years full time degree), MSc and PhD, and an institute awarding the MBA. The Universidade do Porto is the largest university in Portugal. It awards 42 different licenciatura and over 70 MSc degrees. Teaching staff includes near one thousand teachers with the PhD degree, and number of students is close to 25000.
The Faculdade de Engenharia (engineering school) can trace its origins to 1762. It is today one of the largest schools in the Universidade do Porto, with near 4700 students and a teaching staff of 440, 65% holding a doctoral degree. FEUP awards 8 different licenciatura degrees: Civil Engineering, Mining Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Management and Industrial Engineering, Electrical and Computers Engineering, Informatics and Computing Engineering, Metallurgical Engineering, and Chemical Engineering. FEUP also awards 16 different MSc degrees. Further to its own laboratories, FEUP has a number of research centers and industry/university interface institutes. This universe of organisations where FEUP is either the legal entity or has a key role in their activities, is now responsible for an increasingly important research and technology transfer activity, particularly since Portugal became member of the European Union in the mid eighties. Since then, the involvement of FEUP in European Union r&d projects experienced a continuous and marked increase. Nowadays FEUP is seen as an important actor in the European engineering education scene, as was recently recognized in a European wide survey of engineering schools carried out by the German magazine Dear Spillage Assessment of universities in Portugal Formal systematic quality assurance procedures carried out by the universities themselves has no tradition in Portugal, because - like in many other continental European countries - universities were until recently very closely controlled by the Ministry for Education.
A movement towards greater autonomy took place during the last decade. This movement was based on philosophical or political arguments, but also on the very pragmatic concern that due to the great expansion of the higher education system, it was plainly impossible to run the system from the capital in Lisbon. For many decades the higher education system in Portugal was very slow moving, and even issues like curriculum design had to meet the approval of the Ministry for Education in Lisbon. With the new autonomy many issues are now decided locally. Obviously, the question of quality assurance was raised. In earlier times quality assurance was carried out through detailed ex ante regulations, by the Ministry of Education. With the arrival of a great level of autonomy a new system had to be devised. Under the leadership of the Universidade do Porto, a detailed study of systems of quality assurance in Europe was carried out in Portugal. A procedure broadly based on the Dutch system was favoured, and it was the basis for the present national procedure for assessment of universities.
Engineering degrees at Portuguese universities are the object of at least two separate quality assessments or reviews: accreditation process carried out by the professional association - Ordem dos Engenheiros - dealt with in the next section of this paper, and the national procedure of assessment of universities.
The two systems have rather different objectives: the Ordem dos Engenheiros procedure seeks to check whether or not the degrees satisfy certain minimum criteria, whereas the national system of quality assessment has the main objective of promoting quality in all aspects of university life. The national system is explicitly not linked to funding; it is not based on performance indicators, but instead on peer reviews. The system has the following features:
The engineering profession in Portugal; the Ordem dos Engenheiros Engineering education in Portugal is carried out at two levels: at universities, which award the academic degree of licenciado em engenharia (licentiate) after successful completion of a 5 years programme of full time study, and at polytechnics, which run courses leading to the bacharel (bachelor) academic degree, which is awarded after successful completion of a 3 years programme of full time study. During the last decades the professional titles corresponded to these different types of higher education graduates as follows: licentiates were automatically known as engenheiros (engineers), whereas bachelors were known asengenheiros ecnicos (technical engineers).
In order to become a member of the professional association of engineers in Portugal - the Ordem dos Engenheiros - a licentiate degree is required. According to recent law, now only members of the Ordem dos Engenheiros are entitled to the use of the professional title of Engineer, which is therefore a professional title protected by law in this country. This means that the possibility of using the professional title of Engineer is no longer automatically recognised to the holder of a licentiate degree. In order to use that professional title, the licentiate must first become a member of the Ordem dos Engenheiros. Regarding the graduates of the shorter courses (the 3 years degree obtained in polytechnics), those are not entitled to become members of the Ordem dos Engenheiros, unless they obtain the licentiate degree. This degree may be obtained through successful completion of a special 2 years programme of further study, either at the universities or, in some special cases, in polytechnics. From the legal point of view, membership of the Ordem dos Engenheiros is required to become an Engineer. A licentiate is not automatically admitted as a member. First, the Ordem dos Engenheiros will check whether or not his or her degree is already accredited by the Ordem dos Engenheiros. If that is the case, the candidate will be accepted as a member in training, and the training period, carried out at his or her employer, is no longer than two years. In case the degree is not accredited, then the Ordem dos Engenheiros may require an admission examination, before the candidate is admitted as a member in training. The practical relevance of holding the professional title of Engineer (ie, to be a licensed engineer) concerns the several activities that can only be carried out by those who hold that title. Just to mention the most common situation, designs for buildings will only be accepted and eventually approved by the appropriate municipal authorities in case the design is signed by a professional (licensed) engineer. Accreditation is requested by the institution that organises the engineering degree. Ordem dos Engenheiros charge approximately US$3300 as a contribution to the costs of the exercise. The accreditation process has the objective of evaluating the conformity of the education with the technical and professional model of engineer represented by Ordem dos Engenheiros. However, as already mentioned, any holder of a licentiate degree (or legal equivalent) may be a candidate to membership of Ordem dos Engenheiros, even if his/her degree is not accredited, but then must pass an admission examination.
After study of this dossier by the accreditation board for the relevant discipline, the institution is visited during one or two days, and discussions are held with the management, academic staff, and students. A report is then drafted by the visiting committee, and checked by the institution for possible errors. The visiting committee - accreditation board for the discipline - then evaluates the several parameters examined. These are related to the management of the institution, academic staff, organisation of the degree, curriculum (basic subjects, engineering sciences, technical subjects), provisions for students selection and supervision, facilities and institutional culture. The full list of items to be examined numbers 119, of which 43 are considered particularly important. The board then drafts a decision proposal, and the final decision is reached by the Ordem dos Engenheiros.
Similarly to the ABET Engineering Criteria 2000, Ordem dos Engenheiros also looks for ethics-related material within the curriculum. According to ABET 2000 engineering programs must demonstrate that their graduates have an understanding of professional and ethical responsibility'. Ordem dos Engenheiros, in the guide-lines for evaluators, states that evaluators should look for awareness of social and ethical problems of the engineering profession; sense of responsibility of the engineer as regards problems of safety, health and environment'.There is an increasingly widespread belief that the education of engineers must include non-technical subjects, (see, for ex., (2)) so that engineering students may be exposed during their studies with notions, issues and problems that will help them to become better professionals/citizens in the future.
Taking into account this situation, and the accreditation requirements previously mentioned, the Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto is now including, in the curricula of its degree courses, seminars and lectures that explicitly address engineering ethics problems. Also, because engineers are frequently involved in business transactions, reference is made to issues of business ethics. One current trend is the adoption by companies of ethics programs to police their own conduct. Companies 'are expected to take steps to prevent and detect misconduct before harm occurs' (3). Large companies in Portugal already have explicit codes of ethics (see for example the case of PETROGAL, a major Portuguese petrol company). In the present globalisation of the economy, knowledge of practices in different parts of the world is important, particularly so since an international code of business ethics is perhaps still far from existence (4,5).
The present author is one of the staff members involved in actions designed to raise awareness of these issues among the students of FEUP. The following will give details of some of these actions:
In one of the first sessions, students choose a topic for a project. As a general rule, the projects proposed by the course coordinator are intended for groups of 2 students. However, this is not strictly enforced, so that students themselves may propose a topic and/or a different arrangement as regards group (individual project, or project carried out by more than 2 students). Typically projects involve a critical survey of available information in literature (books, journals, magazines) and the INTERNET, as well as some empirical work (interviews, collecting and analyzing data, etc.). The last session of the course is dedicated to public presentations of students' projects. All the projects are made available in the WWW, (http://www.fe.up.pt/~ptcastro/leic_t2.html), and the public discussion is carried out using a data-show equipped room. The presentation involves a concise presentation of the work performed and main findings. Discussion of the presentation is made by the course's academic staff as well as by external visitors.
Further to their specific topics, the actual development of the projects raise useful questions, such as the problem of plagiarism when using the WWW - an area where there may be cases of students having difficulty differentiating between ethical and unethical behavior (see, for ex., (7).
'Ethics and Engineering' - one lecture for the 5th (final) year of the Civil Engineering degree, Civil Constructions track, course Construction Organisation and Public Works (Organizátio da Construátio e Obras Públicas, (1997/8, 1998/9)
The Civil Engineering degree of FEUP is composed of a common curriculum until the 4th year, and several optional tracks in the 5th and final year. Students must choose one of these tracks (Civil Constructions, Structures, Hydraulics, etc.). Approximately one third of the students choose Civil Constructions. The Ethics and Engineering lecture is intended for these students.
Taking into account this type of students, the lecture is designed to touch questions of licensing, the role of professional societies and in particular definition of ethical codes and provision of support to members in this field. The safety of workers in civil engineering construction is addressed, since this is currently an important problem in Portugal.
Taking into account the audience - academic staff - a considerable part of this event is dedicated to issues specific to academic staff, including teaching, plagiarism, academic career, tenure and research ethics.
In the light of ABET Engineering Criteria 2000 or the Ordem dos Engenheiros requirement for reference to social and ethical problems, this lecture also addresses strategies for including these types of problems in the engineering curricula.
Some experiences of addressing ethics issues within engineering education were mentioned. Once the relevance of these activities in the engineering curriculum is established, the comparative discussion of experiences is necessary. Indeed, there is far less consensus on how to raise the awareness of engineering students to these issues, than on how to teach Calculus or Strength of Materials. Some academic staff believe that it is irrelevant to address these problems in the engineering curriculum: according to them, it is only by the ethical attitude of the academic staff and of the institution that a real contribution to the education of the students may be made. Others believe that some more explicit way of addressing the problem must be found. The author has been associated to issues of accreditation of engineering degrees in Portugal. More recently he seats in the Board on Professional Practice and Ethics of the ASME as representative of Region XIII (members outside North America). He also represents the Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto in the European Ethics Network, a thematic network of academics with different backgrounds but a common interest in ethics issues. The involvement in these activities, together with professional practice as an engineering educator and as an engineer, reinforced a conviction that explicit ethics teaching will make a positive contribution to the education of future engineers. Although for younger students perhaps the key to success in ethics awareness is to focus on academic ethics and integrity (plagiarism, etc.), older, mature students will be interested in professional ethics. This is in agreement with experiences elsewhere, see for ex. (9).
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