Professional Engineering Ethics and Christian Values: Overlapping Magisteria (Essay‪)‬

Many faith-based colleges and universities with engineering programs find themselves trying to simultaneously satisfy two educational objectives: (1) meeting the requirements of the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) to produce graduates who have "an understanding of professional and ethical responsibility" and (2) meeting the goals of their own institution for student spiritual formation and development of Christian moral values. This paper will describe and analyze several approaches to understanding the relationship between these two objectives and the implications of these approaches for engineering education. It could be argued that the two goals mentioned above are mutually exclusive. Since professional ethical standards arise out of a secular context and by means of purely logical reasoning, they bear no relationship to personal religious commitments. The implication of this view would be that all engineers need to be taught the engineering code of ethics without regard to any commitments they might have to religiously determined moral absolutes. It could also be argued that the two goals mentioned above are one and the same. Each individual appropriates an all-encompassing system of values and this system is operative in all situations, including professional engineering work. The implication of this view would be that engineers do not need to know the engineering code as long as their parents, early school experiences, church, and devotional life had contributed to a strong moral conscience.