Apply for the Certificate

Whether one looks to defy death through regenerative medicine or the seemingly infinite uses for artificial intelligence, the benefits and excitement of modern technology are unmistakable.

Unfortunately its potential for harm is also haunting and no longer limited to the risk of nuclear annihilation.

Two thousand years before the birth of modern science, Socrates argued that the person who was best equipped to cure a disease was also most capable of spreading one, and so began a conversation still under way: How can the increasingly vast powers of science be guided toward the solution of human problems and kept from aggravating them?

Certificate Requirements

The certificate consists of 12 credit hours, derived from either courses selected from the EES Course Menu or courses of a student’s choice that have been approved by the Certificate Directors.

Any student who has completed the specified courses approved for this certificate but has not received a minimum grade of C+ in each course will still receive credit for these courses as H&SS electives.

Certificate Description

The EES certificate includes a cornerstone course that explores these philosophical questions (and others related to them). The certificate also steers students toward other courses that address these difficult questions and will help them find a path toward workable answers. The list of possible courses includes:

  • courses that view engineering in social, economic and legal contexts;
  • courses that study science and technology in the past, thereby illuminating their influence in the present; and
  • courses that explore the environmental consequences of STEM innovation.

Directors

Paul Diduch, paul.diduch@colorado.edu

Sarah Stanford-Mcintyre, sarah.stanfordmcintyre@colorado.edu

All CEAS students in good standing at CU Boulder may apply to earn a Certificate in Engineering, Ethics & Society. After an initial advising meeting with one of the Certificate Directors, students must inform the directors that they intend to complete the certificate by submitting the EES Certificate Interest Form. Once a student has completed the requirements for the certificate, they should fill out the Certificate Completion Form and submit it to the directors. (Note: this form can be sent any time after the student completes the certificate requirements and grades for all courses counting towards it are in. Deadlines are on the Registrar's certificates page.) Once the Certificate Directors have approved the Completion Form, the Registrar's Office will add the certificate to the student's official record.

Certificate students are socially engaged and are involved in a variety of organizations throughout the college that seek to provide ethical grounding and moral focus to questions raised by technological development and engineering innovation. EES students:

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