SKEE 4012: Summary of Article
Article: W. L. Cooley, P. Klinkhachorn, R. L. McConnell and N. T. Middleton, "Developing professionalism in the electrical engineering classroom," in IEEE Transactions on Education, vol. 34, no. 2, pp. 149-154, May 1991
The engineering profession is closely involved in human relations, business, and commerce. Professionalism among Engineers is very important so that it must be developed from the university classroom. During spring 1990, West Virginia University started to implement an interesting integrated activity in engineering ethics and responsibility for the Electrical Engineering students. A task was given to them about a scenario of a company that needs to do a marketing decision on the Ground Fault Interrupter (GFI) production with also a lawsuit involving the GFI. During the first class, an assignment given for the students to choose a suitable decision for the company with strong reasons. This method was very good to develop Engineering students to have strong decision-making skills before they graduated. In the next class, the students are taken to a court to experience a real scenario for the court judgment of the problem given previously. A student who impersonates as the company Engineer was called out in the court to support his decision. The real intense environment helped the students to think wisely before making any decision for their company. Deciding as a Professional Engineer must cover many aspects including objectives, financial, and organizational culture of a company. During the last class, another scenario been played which the company executives call out all engineers in a meeting to discuss the judgment. In conclusion, the activity helped to open up the student’s mind to become a very careful Engineer and avoid any illegal and unethical jobs.