Macro-Ethics with Aaron Johnson
Join us on March 05
| Engineers cannot make decisions based solely on their technological merits. Rather, engineering decisions affect and are affected by law, policy, economics, public relations, and social ethics. Given this reality, it is important that engineering faculty help students to make connections between social and technical aspects of engineering. This can be done effectively by presenting the social impacts of engineering alongside the technical material commonly taught in engineering science courses. However, there are several barriers to implementing these lessons, including (valid) concerns about faculty members’ preparation, students’ response, and the narrative that engineering is apolitical. In this interactive workshop I will address these concerns by describing our evidence-based ethics dialogues that cultivate students’ moral awareness, or the recognition of the ethical dimensions inherent to engineering. These lessons go beyond typical professional ethics and focus on macroethical questions about engineering’s effect on society. |
Location
504 ECoRE
556 WHITE COURSE DR. UNIVERSITY PARK, PA 16802
556 WHITE COURSE DR. UNIVERSITY PARK, PA 16802
Date & Time
March 5, 2026, 12:00 PM - 1:30 PM
Aaron Johnson
Aaron W. Johnson is an Assistant Professor in the Aerospace Engineering Department and a Core Faculty member of the Engineering Education Research Program at the University of Michigan. His lab’s NSF-funded design-based research focuses on how to re-contextualize engineering science engineering courses to better reflect and prepare students for the reality of ill-defined, sociotechnical engineering practice. Their current projects include studying and designing classroom interventions around macroethical issues in aerospace engineering and the productive beginnings of engineering modeling judgment. Originally from Pittsburgh, Aaron holds a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from Michigan and a Ph.D. in Aeronautics and Astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Prior to re-joining Michigan, he was an instructor in Aerospace Engineering Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder. Outside of work, Aaron enjoys reading, collecting LEGO NASA sets, biking, camping, and playing disc golf.