Teaching Engineering Ethics to PhD Students: a Berkeley–Delft Initiative

A joint effort by the University of California at Berkeley and Delft University of Technology to develop a graduate engineering ethics course for PhD students encountered two types of challenges: academic and institutional. Academically, long-term collaborative research efforts between engineering and philosophy faculty members might be needed before successful engineering ethics courses can be initiated; the teaching of ethics to engineering graduate students and collaborative research need to go hand-in-hand. Institutionally, both bottom-up approaches at the level of the faculty and as a joint research and teaching effort, and top-down approaches that include recognition by a University’s administration and the top level of education management, are needed for successful and sustainable efforts to teach engineering ethics.