Through their many years of study, students will face a myriad of ethical issues. Aerospace engineers have the lives of hundreds of passengers aboard a plane they’ve designed. International affairs students have to make the call as whether to preemptively invade another country or not. While these are only hypothetical situations for most students, examples like these are ones that most, if not all, of us may one day face in our future careers.
“…ethics classes that Tech offers do not sufficiently address the respective issues…”
Currently, the independent ethics classes that Tech offers do not sufficiently address the respective issues that many different majors face on a daily basis in the classroom. Across the board, there are chances for discussion about ethical issues that present themselves in core courses that may go untouched due to the assumption that a separate ethics course will eventually address them. If ethical considerations were integrated into 4000-level core courses, the possibility of a deeper exploration into the ethical issues one may face can be studied in detail and in a manner conducive to the course being taught.
A deeper and more integrated approach to ethical study could help to aid students in garnering a larger interest in the study of ethics in their field, rather than showing little interest and taking a general course just for the grade. In turn, this could give students the tools to approach many of the ethical problems that they will undoubtedly face in their future endeavours.
Our professors are giving us the tools to shape and form the world that we will one day come to inhabit, and so we must have an ethical understanding of what it is that we may or may not choose to create. It is because of this that Tech, a well-known leader in the technical fields, should focus on promoting a stronger focus in ethical studies that other institutions can use a model to follow and help the world’s future scientists create a better world overall.