Development of a Learning Module to Teach Chemical Engineering Students About Moral Reasoning in the Context of Process Safety

Abstract Incorporating ethics and ethical decision-making into the chemical engineering curriculum has always been a challenge given that much of this theory is covered outside of engineering in philosophy departments. Nevertheless, the importance of teaching our students about ethics and moral reasoning has been a component of ABET evaluations for years which means that we need to identify how we can teach and assess them. Recent work by chemical engineering educators identified an approach to assess student understanding of moral reasoning through the development of the Engineering Process Safety Research Instrument (EPSRI); however, assessing students' understanding of moral reasoning is only a part of the story given that many chemical engineering students have not completed a course in ethics or moral reasoning. The goal of this work was to develop a learning module to teach students about moral reasoning and different ethical concepts to better prepare them for a future career in which they can (and most likely will) encounter supervisors and/or co-workers who may have different moral codes or exhibit different stages of moral development. The module was developed by an interdisciplinary team consisting of a chemical engineer and philosophers that incorporated elements from both disciplines to educate senior chemical engineering students about ethnical reasoning, Kohlberg's Stages of Moral Development, and major ethical theories in the context of process safety. The two-day lecture consisted of the students first completing the EPSRI to obtain baseline data on moral reasoning followed by two interactive lecture periods given by team. At the end of the second lecture period the students took the EPSRI again so that the authors could determine if their understanding of moral reasoning changed after the learning module. A unique feature of this module was the team-teaching approach where students were able to be exposed to both the engineering and philosophical concepts that allowed them to gain a greater perspective on how moral reasoning could alter a person's engineering design decisions.