Globalization, Technology, and Ethics

Catalog description

The objective of Globalization, Technology, and Ethics is to prepare students (especially but not limited to engineering, information sciences & technology, and business students) who are headed into the corporate, NGO (non-profit) or government sectors for the challenges and realities of working in a rapidly globalizing world. This course will encourage students to become leaders in a mobile and diverse transnational workplace and help them to become critical citizens of that world. Through team-centered projects and readings from the social sciences and humanities, students will broaden their understanding of engineering, technology, and culture and then be introduced to how one makes ethical decisions about that world. This course is designed to provide skills, theories and experiences that will help them to be respectful, diplomatic and professional while being able to successfully work with technology in multiple cultures and contexts. Students will understand the relationships and the effects on industry, economics, and the many facets of society in an interdependent global economy. These interrelationships will include the differing impacts on individual countries (winners and losers), the question of responsibilities of use or development of technologies and science (long term verses short term impacts). Students will be able to apply ethical analysis to these and many other issues that professionals face.