Becca Monteleone of University of Toledo

While few people are explicitly opposed to ethics or ethical practices, in conventional engineering education and practice, ethics is often thought about as supplemental.  Ethics in engineering can sometimes feel like a rubber stamp:  a checklist of items, continuing education credits, or hoops to jump through that help you remain in compliance with the law, codes of ethics, or professional expectations.  Some even view ethics as an impediment to innovation.  

However, every decision is an ethical one.  For engineers the consequences of those decisions can extend far beyond your bench, your workplace, or your position.  In this talk Dr. Monteleone will discuss how to think about ethics expansively, across the full lifecycle of technologies, and how engineers can integrate justice oriented thinking into their research and practice.  Every element of engineering and technology development involves human choices and human choices are determined by values.  Clearly and explicitly thinking about our values - even when those values seem obvious or universally shared like objectivity or credibility - allows us to think about what is often working invisibly in the background.  This takes ethics out of the realm of compliance and corporate social responsibility and back into focus as core to the work of engineers everywhere.    

Biography:

Dr. Becca Monteleone is an Associate Professor of Disability and Technology at the University of Toledo and chair of the IEEE Neuroethics Framework.  She has earned recognition as a Fulbright Postgraduate Scholar, an IGERT Trainee through the National Science Foundation, and as a Mirzayan Fellow at the National Academy of Engineering's Center for Engineering Ethics and Society.  Her work sits at the intersection of disability studies, medical sociology, and science and technology studies to explore how we construct knowledge about disability across science, medicine, and technology design.  Her first book, "The Double Bind of Disability:  How Medical Technology Shapes Bodily Authority" will be released by the University of Minnesota Press on November 18th.    

Email:

Address:2801 W. Bancroft St., , Toledo, Ohio, United States, 43606

Devon Lossick

Email:

Address:420 Madison Avenue, Suite 800, Toledo, United States, 43606