Congratulations Dr. Alexi Orchard!

Congratulations to our newest PhD graduate, Dr. Alexi Orchard! Alexi's dissertation is titled "Interdisciplinary Pedagogy for Ethical Engineering and Responsible Innovation". Her supervisor was Marcel O'Gorman and Jennifer Boger and readers were Heather Love and Brad Mehlenbacher. Her external examiner was Brent Jesiuk and the internal/external examiner was Paul Heidebrecht. Her defence was chaired by Heather Mair.

Abstract

Since the early 2000s, North American engineering and technology regulatory associations have mandated that accredited engineering programs in higher education must fulfill teaching outcomes including ethics, equity, and the impact of engineering on society and the environment. Though this mandate propelled more research and pedagogical innovation in engineering ethics education (EEE) over the last two decades, some engineering programs have been slow to acknowledge and incorporate perspectives from outside of the engineering field, such as those situated in the humanities and social science (HSS) disciplines. There is an awareness that HSS knowledge and interdisciplinary expertise is well-positioned to enhance the teaching and research of engineering ethics and related topics, such as equity, diversity, inclusion, and social and environmental justice and, as this dissertation will show, there are multiple beneficial ways that this can happen. 

This dissertation examines and demonstrates multiple models for interdisciplinary ethics pedagogy that integrates HSS-based methods and approaches into the engineering curriculum, including workshops and cross-disciplinary curricular interventions. Specifically, this work focuses on how critical design – an arts- and humanities-based research-creation method that emphasizes critical thinking and reflection on the social, psychological, and ecological impacts of technology (Dunne & Raby, 2013) – can be a creative and effective approach to enhancing EEE. This work also incorporates methods and principles informed by the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS), such as responsible innovation (Stilgoe et al., 2013), value sensitive design (Friedman & Hendry, 2019), design justice (Costanza-Chock, 2020), and data feminism (D’Ignazio & Klein, 2020), arguing that they are promising approaches for this purpose as well. A significant contribution of this research is the development of curricular materials using these approaches.

Considering the negative and harmful impacts stemming from the tech industry over the last several years, it is crucial for engineering students to learn and participate in more rigorous ethical deliberation as part of the engineering design workflow. This dissertation argues that by engaging in more interdisciplinary ethics pedagogy, the EEE curriculum will be better prepared to support the ethical development of future engineers.