SARI Colloquim—Lessons on How to Blow It: Stories from Engineering Ethics

Abstract: When most engineers discuss engineering ethics, they will start talking about the Challenger case, or the Columbia case, or maybe the Ford Pinto case.  This talk will not discuss any of these cases. Instead, we will consider many of the (much more) current ethical challenges facing engineers as the boundary between humans and technology becomes even blurrier.  We will consider questions like, what is ethical technology? And why is it important to question if a technology is an ethically acceptable social experiment?  

Bio: Jacquelyn Huff is an assistant teaching professor in the School of Engineering Design and Innovation at Penn State. She earned a B.S. and M.S. in Electromagnetics from the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign.  After working in industry for a few years, she decided to pursue a teaching degree and became a secondary math teacher in Texas public schools.  This is where she found a passion for teaching, and when an opportunity to teach introductory engineering courses at Texas A&M came along, she was thrilled to bring together her passion for teaching and her passion for engineering.  In 2018 Huff relocated with her family to Penn State.  As a teacher of future engineers, she takes seriously her charge to create thoughtful engineers that are excellent stewards of technology.