A team from the IEEE student branch at Temple University in Philadelphia took first prize in the first IEEE Student Ethics Competition. Introduced in January, the competition is designed to provide IEEE's student members with experience in applying ethical concepts to situations that might arise in the workplace.

"Ethics is vitally important and we cover it indirectly in classes and project work, but it's tough to really discuss it because we have so many other subjects to teach," says Shreekanth Mandayam, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Rowan University in Glassboro, N.J. "Competitions like this are probably one of the best ways to teach ethics because the contests can be fun. They get students to think creatively, and the students try to win."

The IEEE Student Branch at Rowan University in Region 2 (Eastern United States) hosted the competition, which was developed by the IEEE Ethics and Member Conduct Committee (EMCC). Teams from nine universities participated in the event, which took place during Region 2's Students Activities Conference on 8 April.

Mandayam, the region's student activities chair, helped organize the competition. EMCC member Gerald Peterson, chair of the ad hoc committee that developed the competition, says that the program's success will depend on IEEE events to implement interesting and challenging ethics competitions that attract larger numbers of IEEE student members. "I encourage event organizers in all 10 regions to offer this competition event," Peterson says, "and to share their experiences and creative ideas with the EMCC to help in continuing to improve the program." (Peterson also is a candidate for 2006 IEEE President-Elect.)

Ethical Case Study The competition hinges on a case study that poses an ethical dilemma. Generally the issue falls into one of four categories: public safety and welfare, a conflict of interest, an engineering practice, or an ethical question in research. To set an example on how to make the contest entertaining, the Rowan hosts enlisted the help of their school's theater department. The result was a 7-minute playlet staged in the school's atrium that presented the issue outlined in the case study. A six-person cast acted out the playlet before the 150 conference attendees and the nine student teams.

As presented in the staged drama, a company was competing for a government contract to build a military bomber. But the plane would have to fly so fast that it pushed its "envelope of safety," according to Tim Osedach, a conference co-chair and author of the case study. When the project manager refused to work on the project because he believed the design compromised safety, the company replaced him with another engineer who gave the project the green light. The students were also told that once built, the bomber operated flawlessly.

"The goal was to present a case that had no obvious right or wrong answers, which forces the contestants to give some thought to the dilemma and defend their arguments," says Osedach, who graduated from Rowan in May with a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering.

Osedach's case study was based in part on the Columbia space shuttle tragedy, and was written with the help of engineering professors at Rowan. Osedach also used information taken from case studies provided by EMCC, which produced the competition rules and procedures and the forms for judging the competitors.

In the Columbia shuttle situation, "NASA was criticized for ignoring the concerns of engineers about the safety of the shuttle, which drew attention to ethical questions and why ethics is important," Osedach says. "Engineers make decisions that concern people's lives and property. Poor ethical decisions can lead to drastic consequences."

For the ethics competition, two- and three-person teams from the schools were sequestered in separate computer labs where they were given 2 hours to evaluate the case and devise their solutions, using the IEEE Code of Ethics as a guide. Each team had to prepare a Power Point presentation explaining its views, which it had 5 minutes to present to a four-judge panel. Judges included a working engineer, professors from Rowan's religion and ethics departments, and a social psychologist. Each team was scored on how well it analyzed the case, its presentation skills, and its use of specific principles cited in the code of ethics in its argument.

Katie Schaffold and Aisha Machunga-Sambo accepted the first place prize of US $400 for Temple, along with a certificate. Their response was that it was unethical for the company to fire the employee just because he raised concerns about safety. Moreover, it was unethical for the company to bring in another manager just to get the project approved.

The rules of the competition also required the team to recommend ways that the employee could have resolved the dilemma. "The original manager should have gone to the company's senior management with his concerns about safety," Schaffold said. "If they didn't act, he should have notified the appropriate authorities outside his organization or maybe even have gone to the media to publicize the situation."

Schaffold, a junior studying electrical engineering, and Machunga-Sambo, who graduated in June with a degree in electrical engineering, praised the IEEE for its efforts to educate students about ethics. "As an organization that covers all of electrical engineering, the IEEE has an important role to play," said Schaffold.

"I think it's great that there are guidelines, like the IEEE Code of Ethics, that we can follow," added Machunga-Sambo.

The team from Pennsylvania State in Harrisburg took the second place prize of $200. Of the seven other schools participating, three are in Pennsylvania: Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania College of Technology in Williamsport, and the University of Scranton. The other four schools were Wright State University in Dayton and DeVry University in Columbus, both in Ohio; Richard Stockton College in Pomona, N.J.; and the University of Maryland Eastern Shore in Princess Anne, Md.

Rowan's student branch produced a DVD of its skit as a tutorial for other regions that plan to hold an ethics competition. For a free copy of the DVD, send an e-mail to Mandayam at shreek@rowan.edu.