Professional Engineering Ethics and Christian Values: Overlapping Magisteria Gayle E. Ermer Many faith-based colleges and universities with engineering programs find themselves trying to simultaneously satisfy two educational objectives: (1) meeting the requirements of the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) to produce graduates who have “an understanding of professional and ethical responsibility” and (2) meeting the goals of their own institution for student spiritual formation and development of Christian moral values. This paper will describe and analyze several approaches to understanding the relationship between these two objectives and the implications of these approaches for engineering education. It could be argued that the two goals mentioned above are mutually exclusive. Since profes- sional ethical standards arise out of a secular context and by means of purely logical reasoning, they bear no relationship to personal religious commitments. The implication of this view would be that all engineers need to be taught the engineering code of ethics without regard to any commitments they might have to religiously determined moral absolutes. It could also be argued that the two goals mentioned above are one and the same. Each individual appropriates an all-encompassing system of values and this system is operative in all situa- tions, including professional engineering work. The implication of this view would be that engineers do not need to know the engineering code as long as their parents, early school experiences, church, and devotional life had contributed to a strong moral conscience. This paper will argue that while each of the two areas has its own distinctiveness, each over- laps the other in content and depends on the other for successful ethical decision-making and action. This argument will be based on the Reformed Christian philosophical perspectives expressed by Abraham Kuyper and Herman Dooyeweerd. The paper will conclude with some practical suggestions for emphasizing the relationship between both domains within the engineering curriculum. A method for integrating engineering ethics into the technical portion of the engineering curriculum within the context of a Christian worldview will also be presented. I n 2002, I had the good fortune to be accepted into a National Science Foun- dation (NSF) sponsored workshop on Ethics Across the Curriculum in engineering and science. In the course of the workshop, I was introduced to several scholars inter- ested in promoting engineering ethics among engineering practitioners and stu- dents. Their goals, and the methods pro- moted to achieve them, struck me as worthy initiatives. I came back to my home institu- tion, Calvin College, and proceeded to implement many of the workshop’s recom- mendations by designing our own Ethics Across the Curriculum program. But a nig- gling doubt about the effectiveness of this style of professional ethical analysis was generated by a comment made by the work- shop instructor while addressing the issue of “freeloaders.” The ethical theories and evaluation process discussed in the work- shop assumed that professionals would 26 Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith Article Gayle E. Ermer Gayle E. Ermer is an associate professor of engineering at Calvin College and has taught there for thirteen years. She is a Calvin alumna who obtained a masters degree in manufacturing systems engineering from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Michigan State University. Her technical specialties are manufacturing systems and machine dynamics. She has written papers on engineering ethics, women in engineering, and Christian perspectives on technology and is a frequent contributor to the biennial Christian Engineering Education Conference. She resides in Hudsonville, MI, with her husband Eric and their three school-age children.