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Qualitative Study of Professional Virtue Development in Engineering

This research-to-practice work-in-progress paper describes the approach and methods for a qualitative study of early engineering students’ development of professional values. The goal of the research program as a whole is to study students’ understanding of professional virtues and how various virtue formation activities affect how students establish positive ethical traits. This specific study was designed to understand the foundation upon which these values can develop and become integrated with the practice of engineering.This study focuses on individual interviews with engineering and computer science students, primarily freshmen and sophomores, at Franciscan University in Steubenville during the spring 2022 semester. Students were asked to describe their motivation to study engineering and their perception of virtues for professional engineering and computing practice. Responses to broad questions were further probed to gather relevant details. This paper describes the background, motivation, and methods for the initial study in this research program.