A team of four engineering students from the Klesse College of Engineering and Integrated Design visited the Ethics in Engineering Case Competition hosted by Lockheed Martin in Bethesda, Maryland. Despite UT San Antonio not participating in the competition for the past six years, junior biomedical engineering major Christian Unogu, senior mechanical engineering major Lexi Seals, junior mechanical engineering major Michael Shova and senior computer and electrical engineering major Aiden Tijerina believed the competition to be a worthwhile experience.
The team underwent six rounds of ethics-based scenarios to find a solution to win over their opponents. During the competition, the four engineers were offered cases involving two competing teams, Alpha and Bravo. Team Alpha focused on a human centered solution, while Team Bravo concentrated on an artificial intelligence approach. The team part of the scenario worked for the same company, contending for a government contract. Seals and Shova were a team, while Unogu and Tijerina were a team. Both pairs competed as an Alpha and Bravo team. The objective of the competition was to work with the opposing team toward a unified solution.
When describing what ethical engineering is, Unogu spoke on behalf of the group.
“We describe ethical engineering as being conscious of the effect of our product in society, in our environment and in the midst of other people. When you create a product, your product is given to a consumer,” Unogu explained. “That’s your main target. It’s being conscious of the quality of the product, the sustainability of the product and the reliability of the product. As engineers, that is something we must always be conscious of, especially when it comes to how we design products and how we try to process our products.”
Deciphering the challenges of navigating an ethical solution for in-house hardware compared to cloud-based technology, Seals brought up how ethics is simply ethics.
“Ethics is ethics, no matter the large scale topic, even when humans are the main designator of the project or the decision making, you want to be ethical,” Seals emphasized. “You want to follow the main ethical principles. You want to be traceable, governable, non-biased and ultimately nutrient.”
The teams competed for both Alpha and Bravo twice; the decision on which is a easier –technical or human based solution– would be debated among the four engineers once they returned from the competition. At the Ethics in Engineering Case Competition, AI and human-based dilemmas grew more difficult as the competition progressed, according to the team of engineering students.
Shova explained how the distinction of which is easier to consider ethically was clearer and more deliberate on the technical side.
“It’s definitely a little more difficult considering human emotion versus just computers,” Shova said.
Shova and Seals mentioned that they did not have much experience with computer-based systems, which was an obstacle they had to overcome during the competition, compared to computer and electrical engineering major Tijerina, who felt that he had the advantage of being familiar with AI.
Unogu detailedexplained how his education in biomedical engineering aided in his strategy of navigating the ethical dilemmas.
“Being a biomedical engineer, our engineering principles are based on the application of the human body,” Unogu explained. “So in all honesty, Aiden was the technical guru in the case study. I was more like the ethical side.”
Seals interned at and now has a co-op with United Airlines, and she brought up how her experience from her job provided an analytical perspective when navigating the ethics competition.
“During my co-op on an airline, we were also made very aware of the ethics of what we’re doing when repairing airplanes,” Seals described. “Recently, a United Airlines plane engine actually caught fire, so we’re very strict on what we’re doing affects people’s lives. And it was the same case that we’re doing at Lockheed, what we were creating will ultimately affect other people.”
After succeeding through three out of the six rounds at the competition, the UT San Antonio team learned valuable lessons from the real life scenarios they embarked on. Students at UT San Antonio are only allowed to compete in this competition one time. Unogu underlined the team’s objective upon their return from the competition.
“Now it’s our mission, our task, our duty, to train and model the next set of students to do, of course, better than we did to motivate them, to inspire them, to give them great advice— the ins and outs and how to better advance themselves in the competition,” Unogu emphasized.
Chemical engineering Professor of Practice Steve Skarke, one of the faculty mentors to the team, mentioned that he hopes to have UT San Antonio engineering students compete again during the spring 2027 semester.
