SERVICE LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES

The first two issues of the recently launched Interna-tional Journal for Service Learning feature three articles promoting the notion that service learning projects can provide hands-on opportunities to under-take sustainable design and development. In ‘‘Service Learning in Engineering and Science for Sustainable CASE 39 Sustainability 279

Development,’’ Clarion University of Pennsylvania physicist Joshua M. Pearce urges that undergraduates should have opportunities to become involved in proj-ects that apply appropriate technologies for sustain-able development.¹¹¹ Especially concerned with alleviating poverty in the developing world, Pearce argues,

The need for development is as great as it has ever been, but future development cannot simply follow past models of economic activity, which tended to waste resources and produce prodigious pollution. The entire world is now paying to clean up the mess and enormous quantities of valuable resources have been lost for future generations because of the Western model of development. For the future, the entire world population needs ways to achieve economic, social, and environmental objectivessimultaneously.

He cites successful projects in Haiti and Guatemala that make use of readily available materials in the locales in which they have been undertaken.

In ‘‘Learning Sustainable Design through Service,’’

Stanford University PhD students Karim Al-Khafaji and Margaret Catherine Morse present a service learning model based on the Stanford chapter of Engi-neers for a Sustainable World to teach sustainable design.¹¹² They illustrate this model in discussing a

Stanford project in the Andaman Islands that focused on rebuilding after the December 26, 2004, earth-quake and tsunami. Behind such projects is a student-led course, ‘‘Design for a Sustainable World,’’ that seeks to

Develop students’ iterative design skills, project management and partnership-building abilities, sustainability awareness, cultural sensitivity, em-pathy, and desire to use technical skills to pro-mote peace and human development.

Help developing communities ensure individu-als’ human rights via sustainable, culturally ap-propriate, technology-based solutions.

Increase Stanford University’s stewardship of global sustainability.¹¹³

In ‘‘Sustainable Building Materials in French Poly-nesia,’’ John Erik Anderson, Helena Meryman, and Kimberly Porsche, graduate students at the University of California at Berkeley’s Department of Civil and En-vironmental Engineering, provide a detailed, technical description of a service learning project designed to assist French Polynesians in developing a system for the local manufacturing of sustainable building materials.¹¹⁴

C A S E 4 0

Testing Water . . . and Ethics

The videoTesting Water. . .and Ethicsis a fictional portrayal of a young engineer facing his first profes-sional dilemma. He attempts to solve the problem by treating it as analogous to a design problem in engineering. He also employs the method of seeking

a creative middle way. This video is available from the Institute for Professional Practice, 13 Lanning Road, Verona, NJ 07044-2511 (phone, 1-888-477-2723; e-mail, [email protected]).

C A S E 4 1

Training Firefighters

Donald J. Giffels, civil engineer and president of a large engineering consulting firm, was puzzled by the design of a government facility to train firefighters dealing with fire crashes of airplanes. His firm was under contract to do the civil engineering work for installing equipment at the facility. Because it

contaminates the soil, jet fuel had recently been replaced by liquid propane for simulating crash fires.

However, Giffels was concerned about a lack of design specificity in a number of areas crucial to safety (e.g., sprinkler systems, safeguards against flash-backs, fuel quantity, and fuel controls). Furthermore,

no design analysis was submitted. Giffels concluded that none existed. However, none of this fell within the direct responsibility of Giffels’s firm, whose con-tract was simply to do the civil engineering work required for installation.

Nevertheless, Giffels concluded that his firm could not simply let this go. He contacted the design-ers and asked them how they could justify putting their professional seal of approval on the design. They re-plied, ‘‘We don’t need to. We’re the government.’’

Giffels agreed, but he persisted (to the point, he sus-pects, of making a pest of himself). Noting that it is easy to be a minimalist (e.g., stay within the law), Giffels worried that one might nevertheless fail to ful-fill a responsibility to society. He contacted another engineering firm that had installed a similar design at 10 sites. It, too, he said, had been concerned about safety when looking at the designs. It contacted a me-chanical engineering firm, asking it to do a design study. This request was turned down because of liabil-ity fears. So, the civil engineering firm asked the government agency to write a letter absolving it of

any responsibility in case of mishaps due to the inad-equate design.

While not contesting the legality of this firm’s way of dealing with the problem, Giffels insisted that this was not the correct way to proceed. His company refused to proceed with the installation until the safety issues were adequately addressed. The government agency agreed to bring in three other firms to deal with the concerns. Giffels firm’s contract was modified to provide assurances that the safety issues would be addressed. Giffels stresses the importance of being able to communicate effectively about these matters—a communication responsibility. Good commu-nication, he says, is essential to getting others on board.

Although successful in his efforts to ensure safety, Giffels says that this is not a story that would receive press notice. However,notresisting, he insists, might well have resulted in press coverage—such as from the deaths of firefighters going through their simulations.

Discuss the ethical challenges facing Giffels and his strategy in dealing with them.

C A S E 4 2

TV Antenna

Several years ago, a TV station in Houston decided to strengthen its signal by erecting a new, taller (1,000-foot) transmission antenna in Missouri City, Texas. The station contracted with a TV antenna design firm to design the tower. The resulting design employed twenty 50-foot segments that would have to be lifted into place sequentially by a jib crane that moved up with the tower. Each segment required a lifting lug to permit that segment to be hoisted off the flatbed delivery truck and then lifted into place by the crane. The actual construction of the tower was done by a separate rigging firm that specialized in such tasks.

When the rigging company received the 20th and last tower segment, it faced a new problem. Although the lifting lug was satisfactory for lifting the segment horizontally off the delivery truck, it would not enable the segment to be lifted vertically. The jib crane cable interfered with the antenna baskets at the top of the segment. The riggers asked permission

from the design company to temporarily remove the antenna baskets and were refused. Officials at the design firm said that the last time they gave permission to make similar changes, they had to pay tens of thou-sands of dollars to repair the antenna baskets (which had been damaged on removal) and to remount and realign them correctly.

The riggers devised a solution that was seriously flawed. They bolted an extension arm to the tower sec-tion and calculated the size of the required bolts based on a mistaken model. A sophomore-level engineering student who had taken a course in statics could have detected the flaw, but the riggers had no engineers on their staff. The riggers, knowing they lacked engi-neering expertise, asked the antenna design company engineers to review their proposed solution. The engi-neers again refused, having been ordered by company management not only not to look at the drawings but also not to visit the construction site during the lifting of the last segment. Management of the design firm CASE 42 TV Antenna 281

feared that they would be held liable if there were an accident. The designers also failed to suggest to the rig-gers that they should hire an engineering consultant to examine their lifting plans.

When the riggers attempted to lift the top section of the tower with the microwave baskets, the tower fell, killing seven men. The TV company was taping the lift of the last segment for future TV promotions, and the videotape shows the riggers falling to their death.

Consider how you would react to watching that tape if you were the design engineer who refused to look at the lifting plans or if you were the company

executive who ordered the design engineer not to ex-amine the plans.

To take an analogy, consider a physician who examines a patient and finds something suspicious in an area outside her specialty. When asking advice from a specialist, the physician is rebuffed on the grounds that the specialist might incur a liability. Fur-thermore, the specialist does not suggest that the pa-tient should see a specialist.

What conceptions of responsibility seemed most prevalent in this case? Can you suggest other concep-tions that might have helped avoid this tragedy?

C A S E 4 3

Unlicensed Engineer

Charles Landers, former Anchorage assemblyman and unlicensed engineer for Constructing Engineers, was found guilty of forging partner Henry Wilson’s signa-ture and using his professional seal on at least 40 documents. The falsification of the documents was done without Wilson’s knowledge, who was away from his office when they were signed. Constructing Engineers designs and tests septic systems. The signed and sealed documents certified to the Anchor-age city health department that local septic systems met city wastewater disposal regulations. Circuit Judge Michael Wolverton banned Landers for 1 year from practicing as an engineer’s, architect’s, or land surveyor’s assistant. The judge also sentenced him to 20 days in jail, 160 hours of community service,

$4,000 in fines, and 1 year of probation. Finally, Land-ers was ordered to inform property ownLand-ers about the problems with the documents, explain how he would rectify the problem, and pay for a professional engineer to review, sign, and seal the documents.

Assistant Attorney General Dan Cooper had re-quested the maximum penalty: a 4-year suspended sentence and $40,000 in fines. Cooper argued that

‘‘the 40 repeated incidents make his offense the most serious within the misuse of an engineer’s seal.’’ This may have been the first time a case like this was liti-gated in Alaska. The Attorney General’s office took on the case after seeking advice from several profes-sional engineers in the Anchorage area.

According to Cooper, Landers said he signed and sealed the documents because ‘‘his clients needed

something done right away.’’ (The documents were needed before proceeding with property transac-tions.) Lander’s attorney, Bill Oberly, argued that his client should be sentenced as a least offender since public health and safety were not really jeopardized—subsequent review of the documents by a professional engineer found no violations of standards (other than forgery and the misuse of the seal). The documents were resubmitted without need-ing changes.

However, Judge Wolverton contended that Land-er’s actions constituted a serious breach of public trust. The public, he said, relies on the word of those, like professional engineers, who are entrusted with special responsibilities: ‘‘Our system would break down completely if the word of individuals could not be relied upon.’’

The judge also cited a letter from Richard Arm-strong, chairman of the Architects, Engineers, and Land Surveyors Board of Registration for Alaska’s De-partment of Commerce and Economic Development.

Armstrong said,

Some of the reasons for requiring professional engi-neers to seal their work are to protect the public from unqualified practitioners; to assure some minimum level of competency in the profession; to make practic-ing architects, engineers, and land surveyors responsible for their work; and to promote a level of ethics in the profession. The discovery of this case will cast a shadow of doubt on other engineering designed by properly licensed individuals.

Identify and discuss the ethically important ele-ments in this case. How relevant is it that subsequent review showed that none of the falsified documents

needed to be changed? (Although Judge Wolverton did not impose the maximum penalty, he did not treat Landers as a least offender.)

C A S E 4 4

Where Are the Women?

Although women have become more prevalent in engi-neering schools during the past few decades, they still make up only approximately 20 percent of engineering school undergraduates in the United States. Even this percentage is somewhat misleading. Women are more prevalent in some engineering fields than others. For example, more than 30 percent of the undergraduates in chemical engineering departments are women, but only 13 percent of the undergraduates in mechanical engineering and electrical engineering are women.¹¹⁹ Eighteen percent of all engineering PhDs are awarded to women. There are even fewer women faculty in engineering schools. The higher the faculty rank, the fewer women there are. At the top rank of full professor, less than 5 percent are women.¹²⁰This means that engi-neering students in the United States are taught and

mentored almost exclusively by males, that there are few women faculty serving as role models for female students, and that engineering more generally remains dominated by men.

As interesting comparisons, women receive 57 per-cent of all baccalaureate degrees in the United States and 55 percent of all social science PhDs, women make up at least 50 percent of the students in medical and law schools, and 28 percent of full professors in the social sciences are women.¹²¹Therefore, what is happening in engineering schools? No doubt, there are a number of contributing factors to the fact that there are so few women in engineering. But many common beliefs about women and academic advance-ment in engineering prove to be without merit when the evidence is examined.

Belief Evidence

1. Women are not as good in mathematics as men.

Female performance in high school mathematics now matches that of males.

2. It is only a matter of time before the issue of ‘‘underrepresentation’’ on faculties is resolved; it is a function of how many women are qualified to enter these positions.

Women’s representation decreases with each step up the tenure track and academic leadership hierarchy, even in fields that have had a large proportion of women doctorates for 30 years.

3. Women are not as competitive as men.

Women do not want jobs in academe.

Similar proportions of men and women with science and engineering doctorates plan to enter postdoctoral study or academic employment.

4. Women and minorities are recipients of favoritism through affirmative action programs.

Affirmative action is meant to broaden searches to include more women and minority group members but not to select candidates on the basis of race or sex, which is illegal.

5. Academe is a meritocracy. Although scientists like to believe that they ‘‘choose the best’’ based on objective criteria, decisions are influenced by factors—including biases about race, sex, geographic loca-tion of a university, and age—that have nothing to do with the quality of the person or work being evaluated.

6. Changing the rules means that standards of excellence will be deleteriously affected.

Throughout a scientific career, advancement depends on judgments of one’s performance by more senior scientists and engineers. This process does not optimally select and

(Continued) CASE 44 Where Are the Women? 283

Recently, a number of academic researchers have attempted to separate the myths from the facts about why so few women hold senior-level and leadership engineering positions. One plausible explanation is that slight disparities accumulate over time to disad-vantage women and addisad-vantage men. Subconscious expectations tied to gender (gender schemas) are an important source of these disparities. We expect, for example, men to be the primary earners and women to be the primary providers of child care. A full range of studies on the influence of gender schemas in assessments of professional competence shows quite convincingly that over time, gender schemas contribute significantly to female engineering faculty being consistently underrated and male engineering faculty being consistently overrated.¹²³Gender sche-mas are held unconsciously by both men and women and subtly influence perceptions and judg-ments made about one another.¹²⁴Experimental data show, for example, that letters of reference for profes-sional women tend to be shorter and to contain twice

as many doubt-raisers (e.g., ‘‘she has a somewhat chal-lenging personality’’), more grindstone adjectives (e.g.,

‘‘hardworking’’ or ‘‘conscientious’’), and fewer stand-out adjectives (e.g., ‘‘brilliant’’) as letters for men.¹²⁵ Other studies show that women tend to feel less enti-tled to high salaries and less confident in their mathe-matical abilities even when their actual performance levels equal those of male peers. Men are expected to be strong and assertive (leaders) and women to be nurturing listeners. As a result, women holding posi-tions of leadership often must work harder to demon-strate actual leadership.

Because most of the faculty and administrators at engineering schools, both male and female, genuinely wish to advance and promote more women, focusing on gender schemas is especially relevant to advancing women in engineering fields. Virginia Valian, a researcher on gender schemas, makes this point. She writes, ‘‘The moral of the data on gender schemas is that good intentions are not enough; they will not guarantee the impartial and fair evaluation that we advance the best scientists and engineers because of implicit bias and disproportionate weighting of qualities that are ster-eotypically male. Reducing these sources of bias will foster excellence in science and engineering fields.

7. Women faculty are less productive than men.

The publication productivity of women science and engi-neering faculty has increased during the past 30 years and is now comparable to that of men. The critical factor affecting publication productivity is access to institutional resources;

marriage, children, and elder care responsibilities have minimal effects.

8. Women are more interested in family than in careers.

Many women scientists and engineers persist in their pursuit of academic careers despite severe conflicts between their roles as parents and as scientists and engineers. These efforts, however, are often not recognized as representing the high level of dedication to their careers they represent.

9. Women take more time off due to childbearing, so they are a bad investment.

On average, women take more time off during their early careers to meet caregiving responsibilities, which fall dispro-portionately to women. However, by middle age, a man is likely to take more sick leave than a woman.

10. The system as currently configured has worked well in producing great science;

why change it?

The global competitive balance has changed in ways that undermine America’s traditional science and engineering advantages. Career impediments based on gender, racial, or ethnic bias deprive the nation of talented and accomplished researchers.¹²²

Belief Evidence (Continued)

all hold as an ideal.’’¹²⁶As engineering schools at-tempt to recruit and advance more women, it is impor-tant to assess the ways in which and the degree to which harmful gender schemas serve as barriers to women’s advancement. At some institutions, such as the University of Michigan, such efforts have involved conducting gender schema workshops, forming focus groups, conducting interviews, and collecting survey data to assess the prevalence of gender schemas con-tributing to underrating women faculty in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields.¹²⁷

One hypothesis is that once the harmful implicit sche-mas are made explicit, we can begin to address them at individual, departmental, and institutional levels and, at the very least, decrease their harmful impact.

Identify and discuss some of the subtle expecta-tions both men and women have about gender. How do these gender schemas influence the advancement and promotion of women in engineering? Can you think of any examples from your own experience of men being advantaged and women being disadvan-taged as a result of gender schemas?

C A S E 4 5

XYZ Hose Co.

Farmers use anhydrous ammonia to fertilize their fields.

The anhydrous ammonia reacts violently with water, so care must be exercised in disbursing it. Farmers’ coop-eratives rent anhydrous ammonia in pressurized tanks equipped with wheels so the tanks can be pulled by tractors. The farmers also rent or purchase hoses that connect the tanks to perforated hollow blades that can be knifed through the soil to spread the ammonia.

Leaks from the hose are potentially catastrophic.

For years, the industry standard hose was made of steel-meshed reinforced rubber, which was similar in construction to steel-reinforced automobile tires.

Two separate trade associations had established these industry-wide standards.

Approximately 15 years ago, a new, heavy-duty plastic became available that could replace the steel in the hoses. The plastic-reinforced hoses were less ex-pensive, lighter, and easier to process than the steel-braided rubber. The new hose met the industry stan-dards. One company, the XYZ Hose Company, began marketing the plastic-reinforced hose to farmers. Offi-cials of XYZ knew, as a result of tests by a consultant at a nearby state agricultural college, that the plastic did not react immediately to the anhydrous ammonia;

however, over the years the plastic did degrade and lose some of its mechanical properties. Accordingly, they put warnings on all the hoses they manufactured, indicating that they should be replaced periodically.

After the product had been on the market a few years, several accidents occurred in which the XYZ hoses ruptured during use and blinded and severely injured the farmers using them. Litigation followed, and XYZ argued in its defense that the farmers had mis-used the hoses and not heeded the replacement warn-ings. This defense was unsuccessful, and XYZ made substantial out-of-court settlements.

XYZ has since dropped this product line and placed advertisements in farmers’ trade journals and producers’ cooperatives newsletters asking farmers to turn in their XYZ hoses for full refunds. The advertise-ments state that the hoses are ‘‘obsolete,’’ not that they are unsafe.

Identify and discuss the ethical issues this case raises, paying special attention to relevant, key ideas presented in this chapter. What are the relevant facts? What factual, conceptual, and application issues are there? What methods for resolving these issues might be used?

N O T E S

1. Steven Weisskoph, ‘‘The Aberdeen Mess,’’

Washington Post Magazine,January 15, 1989.

2. The Aberdeen Three, a case prepared under National Science Foundation grant number DIR-9012252. The principal investigators were

Michael J. Rabins, Charles E. Harris, Jr., Charles Samson, and Raymond W. Flumerfelt. The com-plete case is available at the Texas A & M Engi-neering Ethics website (http://ethics.tamu.edu).

3. Case study prepared by Ryan Pflum, MA philos-ophy student at Western Michigan University.

Notes 285