Examining the correlation between religion and social responsibility in engineering

The development of social responsibility, both personally and professionally, is critical in the movement toward developing more holistic engineers, as called for by many professional engineering societies to address the complex problems that face our society. This paper presents correlations between engineering students' religious beliefs and their views of personal and professional social responsibility. Data were gathered from 895 engineering respondents to the Engineering Professional Responsibility Assessment tool and from 25 semi-structure interviews with engineering students. It was found that students who considered themselves `very active' in their religious preference had stronger beliefs of their ability and personal obligation to help others, and in a professional sense of obligation to help others as engineers.