Guarding ethics in engineering [The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly]

Of the eight subjects that cadets at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut, can major in, half of them fall under engineering. In each discipline - civil, electrical, mechanical, and naval architecture-marine engineering - the curriculum is packed, filled with all the basic math, science, and engineering knowledge a student needs to go on to graduate school, then the Coast Guard. Graduates leave, the academy boasts, with "an understanding of professional and ethical responsibility" and, in that regard, the engineering department has recently taken its program up a notch.