Engineering with values and morals at the center
The Engineering and the Good Life (EGL) program is a set of courses and other academic activities designed to engage students with the social and moral aspects of engineering design.
Every new technology invented raises novel moral challenges and unprecedented potential for social impact through design. However, the rapid pace of technological advancement today leaves no room for “disruption first, ask moral questions later.” Developing products that actually improve human life and society must begin before design commences; it must start as a fundamental commitment of the engineer.
Students enter engineering because they want to design ways to make the world a better place. Nonetheless, research shows that this impetus often fades over the four years of an undergraduate engineering education. The EGL program is designed to engage the ethics (including the examination of what we mean by a good life and a better world) across the entire engineering curriculum in order to maintain and encourage students’ initial impetus to design for the good and to uphold a commitment to the good life as the ultimate goal of engineering.
Jesuit Education has long been committed to the principle of cura personalis, the care and training of the whole person. At SCU, we have adopted a T-model of engineering education: the core curriculum is designed to offer every SCU student a broad humanistic education that balances against the depth of an engineering student’s major (technical) courses. The EGL program provides the linkage between these two beams by connecting social and ethical commitments to technical applications, and thus enriching both the broad core and the deep technical education.