What?

The main goal of this initiative is to work towards expanding and deepening the integration of ethics across engineering courses at CU Boulder so that ethical reasoning becomes a natural, expected part of technical problem‑solving. Engineering decisions influence public safety, environmental sustainability, data privacy, and social equity, yet ethics is often treated as a separate requirement rather than a core engineering skill. The College of Engineering & Applied Science is accredited by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET), which means that CEAS has demonstrated satisfaction of all 8 “General Criteria for Baccalaureate Level Programs,” which include outcomes 3, 4, 5, and 7, all of which are especially relevant to ethics. Although there exists the Herbst Program for Engineering, Ethics & Society; freshman and senior projects; as well as discussions within courses by professors who are interested in teaching the importance of ethics in engineering, there still come times when students do not interact with these resources. The Herbst Program reaches just over 50% of engineering undergraduate students, as stated by Dr. Lange, the program director; freshman projects are not required for all courses, leading to some majors having less interaction with a course that includes brief ethical teachings and senior projects, which, although they have discussions on ethics, for some it feels missing and can feel quite late to formally introduce to students at that point in their educational careers.

Adding more standalone classes, further increasing the already high credit requirement for degrees in the CEAS, or requiring an H&SS course to be chosen from the list of Herbst courses unintentionally minimizes the flexibility of engineering students to choose multidisciplinary courses in an often restrictive and intradisciplinary environment while restricting their opportunities to learn about the global, economic, and societal perspectives that would help them in their careers as engineers.

After speaking with numerous program directors, professors, faculty members, and students alike; gathering information on the most feasible course of action and ways to ensure relevant parties are not negatively impacted; and garnering general support, we have built and continued to develop a portfolio including senior survey data and a petition with over 130 supporters. The senior survey data, which is from the spring of 2021 and 2025, shows the percentage of students, separated by engineering discipline, that said they agree/strongly agree to the question that “CU Boulder contributed to my knowledge, skills, and personal development in the following areas,” being “Applying high ethical standards to all endeavors,” shows a decrease for our overall college in comparison to the larger university, 62% and 63% in 2021 to 59% and 67% in 2025, respectively. There are additional drops and increases for some disciplines. One example of this being aerospace engineering, which went from 64% agreeing/strongly agreeing in 2021 to 38% in 2025, while civil engineering went from 58% agreeing/strongly agreeing in 2021 to 94% in 2025. These results may not explicitly include external impacts such as prior interest in ethics, information on ethics-specific courses, certificates and/or minors completed, or degree-specific high standards or expectations, making it a complex issue that requires a multipronged, considerate, and tactful approach.

The senior survey data shows that engineering students’ confidence in their ethical preparation has become increasingly uneven across disciplines. While the broader university saw an increase in students agreeing that CU contributed to their ethical development, CEAS experienced a slight decline, with some individual departments showing dramatic swings. These patterns may suggest that ethics education is not consistently integrated across the engineering curriculum, where some programs may have more embedded ethics assignments or faculty who emphasize ethical reasoning while others may assume ethics is “covered elsewhere." They may support variability in student experience as students’ perceptions of ethics education are shaped by whether ethics is taught as real-world, relevant, and applied; whether it appears in multiple courses or only one; whether faculty treat ethics as central or peripheral; or whether students see ethical reasoning modeled in class culture. However, these patterns may even suggest the impact that departmental culture has, as ethics are often absorbed through classroom expectations and how faculty talk about responsibility, safety, and the societal impact we engineers have. The data highlights both the need and the opportunity to strengthen ethics integration in ways that are relevant, consistent, and meaningful for all engineering students.

Therefore, we would like to argue that the current curriculum would benefit from the integration of more ethical teachings and discussions throughout our entire undergraduate careers. Instead, we believe we should shift the implementation of this goal to further integrate ethical thinking into the technical content students are already learning, making it more relevant, applied, and meaningful. This may look like more foundational teachings in earlier, first-year courses, allowing students to understand the responsibilities we have as engineers; to assess and delve deeper into more complex and interactive field-/degree-specific dilemmas; and encouraging engineering students to critically think and be aware of their own autonomy as students and professionals. This idea focuses on weaving ethics into the existing curriculum through foundational teachings, course-specific case studies, real-world dilemmas, reflective assignments, and collaboration with the Herbst Program and individual departments to develop tailored learning objectives and outcomes for these teachings. By exploring opportunities to further embed ethical analysis directly into a set of required courses that span the entire 4-year undergraduate engineering degree beyond freshman projects and senior capstones, students can better understand the human impact of their work and develop the critical thinking needed for responsible innovation.

Implementing this vision could involve supporting faculty with the production of ready‑to‑use ethics modules that can help professors facilitate meaningful ethical conversations and reduce stigma surrounding teaching interdisciplinary topics that may not be of one's specialty, encouraging departments to adopt ethics‑focused learning outcomes in collaboration with the Herbst Program, and expanding ethics content in project‑based courses. By strengthening the ethical foundation of engineering education, CU Boulder can better prepare students for the complex responsibilities they will face in the real world, whether it be in industry, research, academia, medicine, or beyond, and position itself as a leader in the education of well-informed, socially responsible innovators and engineers.