Benjamin Newell Portfolio

Ethics Essay

                Ethics are described as the moral principles that govern the behavior of a person as they follow through with an activity. Ethics may also be described as a sort of philosophy, where it is suggested to act in a certain way while doing certain things. Ethics are present everywhere from your school work to your professional job and subconsciously everywhere in between. We often do not think about ethics, but the way we grow and learn as people leads to us constantly changing our ethical beliefs and the way we act.

While most ethical codes are systematic beliefs, they definitely aren’t bad. The ethics I will be talking about today are based on the sciences and how to act in the workplace. These are some of the most important ethical codes because they dictate how productive, secure, and professional an employee or company as a whole may be. The main purpose of these codes is to set a standard in the field for how an individual or group should act when following through with some activity. The main focal point of these codes is to promote integrity, honesty, and overall good practice.

We are faced with ethical decisions frequently in our day to day lives. Most of these are probably systematic and subconscious choices that we make without even realizing. We also make many conscious ethical decisions. An example of a conscious decision would be someone remembering to cite their sources as they work on a research document. This is an easy example and is just one of many more difficult ethical choices that we may face. How should we go about making these conscious ethical decisions? When faced with a moral dilemma, I believe you should first look at your core values as a person, and then refer to any ethical codes you may be obligated to follow. After you weigh your options, the choice shouldn’t be too difficult, but your morals won’t always coincide with your professional obligations. If your core values conflict with any professional codes you are meant to follow, I think you are in the wrong place doing the wrong job.

As a class, we looked at several ethical problems such as the Volkswagen issue, Pinto issue, Amazon Echo issue, and Big Data issue. Each of these issues covered some sort of ethical dilemma where someone is left pondering what decision is correct. It’s not always simple what the right decision is, but ethical codes can help us find what we believe is the most correct path.

The main Issue I want to discuss is the Big Data issue. This story follows Marcus, who helps mind data for a research organization that want data on job related injuries. A lot of the data involved is called PII data or Personally Identifiable Information. Any sort of data leak involving PII is a very big issue. Marcus make an algorithm within his mining code that sorts out the PII as to not create any problems. Marcus’s boss John wants to include an extra set of data on needle stick injuries, but he doesn’t follow the same ethical codes that Marcus has been. John sends an email to Marcus with all of the needle stick data, including the PII. Marcus follows his bosses orders and opens the document, now having access to an immense amount of sensitive PII data. Marcus is left feeling uneasy and unsure on how to approach the situation going forward.

My class and I come to similar conclusions on how Marcus should approach the issue. I believe he should consult ethical codes #1 and #10 in the IEEE code of ethics. This means that Marcus should approach his boss in some professional manner and confront him on his violation of the code. This means that John will grow as a professional and hopefully learn from his mistake, Marcus will not feel uneasy doing his job, and no more potentially dangerous data will be passed around as lightly.

I believe this issue relates to three ethics from the virtue ethics. These are integrity, fidelity, and responsibility. Integrity, simply put, is the practice of good ethical judgement and moral uprightness. John makes an immoral decision that leads to a possible data leak and Marcus is left with a decision to make. Will he confront his boss, or follow through with his orders? This is not a good place to put your workers in, and this is where fidelity comes in. Fidelity is faithfulness. In this context It is faithfulness to your employees and the public. John makes a decision that puts many people’s person data at risk and puts his employee in between a rock and a hard place. Lastly, I think responsibility is very relevant in the context of the issue. Responsibility is partially defined as recognizing a personal and moral obligation to act for the good of others. John is clearly not acting for the good of the public or Marcus. He is taking shortcuts and putting others at risk in the process.

General Education Reflection

Throughout my time at Iowa State University, I have had the opportunity to take a wide variety of courses from different disciplines covering different topics. Outside of Electrical Engineering, these courses gave me some good perspective and insight into the different majors and fields of work, while also helping further some unique skills. I will list some of the general education courses I have taken and go over my thoughts of each specifically. 

The first general education course I took here at Iowa state was Intro to Music Listening (Music 102).  I have always loved music and had been in concert and marching band all throughout grade school, so this was a natural first choice for me. The course was intended to teach us a few major things. I learned more about the five major elements of music (Rhythm, Pitch/Melody, Harmony, Timbre, and Shape). I learned how to identify different rhythmic organizations, melodies and their functionality, production of harmony, and how these elements are all manipulated to create good music. It became easier to recognize and decipher these different musical elements through taking this course. Overall, it was a very interesting course that taught me some more about the theory of music as well as music in different cultures and how it has evolved overtime as a whole.

In the fall of 2019, I took human sexuality (HD FS 276). This was an interesting course, as it is something that most feel they know enough about themselves and do not need to learn more, but it was eye opening to take this type of class with a very large group of students and learn that everyone has different diverse experiences and it is important to recognize that there is always more to learn when it comes to understanding the mental and sexual health of yourself and your significant other. I learned about the biological, behavioral, and psychological aspects of human sexuality. I also learned about the role of sexuality in human development and some communication/decision-making skills regarding relationships and sexuality as a whole. 

I have also taken Principles of Marketing (MKT 340), Engineering Law (Con E 380), and Entrepreneurship/Innovation (MGMT 310). I am clumping these three together as I feel that they all fit into the same category of interest for me. I took these classes because I have an interest in technical sales engineering, consulting, and just working with customers in general. I thought it would be wise to take some marketing and management related classes to give me some insight into the industry. These courses all proved to be of great worth to me. They allowed me to learn about some things that I will most likely be doing in my career, but that I would not have learned in my required electrical engineering courses. Some of the skills that I developed through these classes are proposal writing, non-technical project planning & execution, budgeting (long & short term), marketing techniques, sales techniques, and just generally how to better understand and provide for a customer/client.

Overall, I think the general education system at Iowa State is great as it forces students to go out of their way to diversify their knowledge and explore other interests. It provides great insight into other areas of focus, and may even open opportunities to other career paths. I am happy with the general education courses I have taken, and believe that they have helped me become a better student and engineer.

Cumulative Reflection

My name is Benjamin Newell and I am a soon to be Electrical Engineer graduating from Iowa State University in the spring of 2022. I am from Rosemount Minnesota. I picked Iowa State because I wanted to pursue Computer Engineering, and I saw that they had a good program. I also loved the campus. I started out my time here as as computer Engineering undergrad in 2018. It was a hard first year for me. I had not taken any higher level calculus classes in high school, and I was jumping in to a major that was all mathematics. As a kid with ADHD, I had to make some big changes to my work style and ethic in order to succeed. It took almost until my junior year to iron out a solid style and plan that worked for me, but It didn’t stop me from completing my program in 4 years, just as everybody else, although there may have been some longer nights and more struggles along the way. I feel that school systems in general are not at all designed well to work with the ADHD brain in mind, but Iowa State did a good job providing me with the necessary resources I needed to succeed. 

Sophomore year, I was through most of what were considered the “weed out” classes in Computer Engineering. I had also learned at this point that I was more interested in the hardware side of things, rather than software. I then took COM S 228: Intro to Data Structures. This class showed me that I was not as interesting in pursuing software or computer science in general anymore, which is a decent portion of computer engineering. This caused me to rethink my field of study and look into Electrical Engineering. If I switched to Electrical, almost all of the classes I had taken up to that point would be transferred and still useful towards completing my degree. I would also get to pursue more hardware. The only downside of the decision was the higher level math that came with it, but that I something that I learned to be fine with and even enjoy at times. There is something wonderful about understanding complicated concepts that you would have never thought you’d touch, such as multivariable calculus and electromagnetism, that makes the work worth it. I ultimately ended up deciding to switch to Electrical Engineering the second semester of my sophomore year. I am glad I made this decision, as my academics have improved since then and I am very happy with the career I am now able to pursue in electrical controls engineering.

Since junior year, I feel like I have grown significantly in several different areas. I feel that I have a better understanding now of what types of careers I will be able to pursue, I feel much more comfortable in ensuring my success, and I feel that I have become a more rounded out engineer and person as a whole. I have been able to fine tune my study habits and work ethic, while also receiving an internship that would lead to my first major career path decision. I had nothing to complain about my junior year semesters, other than the pandemic of course. I felt like I had finally found my place. The pandemic, while obviously an annoyance, did not prove to be much of a hinderance to my education. I believe that this can be attributed to the speedy decision making of the university and the types of people that are professors in Electrical Engineering. What I mean by this is that I feel most professors in my major are relatively technologically savvy, as it just comes with the trade. This means that most of my courses were able to transition relatively smoothly with only minor hiccups in the learning experience as a whole. 

A lot has happened since the start of my senior year. I started senior design, picked electromagnetism as my major focus, have gotten a fulltime job in controls engineering, and will now be graduating this coming may of 2022. My senior design project is a fast, compact, high strength magnetic pulse generator. The project is supervised by Mani Mina and Robert Bouda. A description of the project can be found in the projects section of my portfolio. This project has taught me a lot about working in groups. I have learned a lot about how to schedule, how to divide work, how to cater to certain strengths of team members, and how to make yourself a valued member of a team. I have also learned a lot about the long-winded design process of electronic devices. Some particular skills that I have picked up are project documentation, designing systems with high power & high speed mosfets, prototyping & iterating of designs, components research, ordering components, testing and interpreting data, and doing in-depth research to further my knowledge of a subject related to my work. I picked this project because it is related to my focus (electromagnetism), and because my favorite professor would be advising it (Mani Mina). It has provided me with some great skills that I definitely see myself using in the real world.

Ultimately, It may have been a bit of a bumpy ride in the beginning, but I was able to find where I belong and could not be happier with my education at Iowa State. I believe the curriculum has allowed me to best prepare myself for working in the real world, in whatever electrical related career path I would go down. That path happens to be controls engineering for now, and I could not feel more comfortable and ready to get going with the next big chapter in my life.