Work in progress - Incorporating ethics and social responsibility in undergraduate engineering education

One tactic that has not been effectively evaluated to increase the involvement of women and underrepresented minorities in engineering is the incorporation of a socially and ethically relevant framework in the teaching of engineering at the undergraduate level. In this research, we are characterizing the efforts currently utilized in universities to integrate social relevance and engineering in the curriculum. We are conducting a pilot study to evaluate the effects of these efforts on overall student interest in the field and retention, women and minority student interest and retention, and students' awareness of the overlap between society and technology. This study involves a pre- and post-semester survey of students in engineering courses that incorporate ethics and social responsibility to a greater or lesser degree. We plan to make suggestions for the most effective strategies currently used and to recommend new strategies to incorporate these issues in the engineering curriculum, with a focus on the attitudes of women and underrepresented minorities.