A Discussion of Ethics and Computer Science

By: Keith MacDonell - kmacdone As neither a woman nor a minority, I obviously don't have first hand experience with the challenges both groups have breaking into STEM fields. My speculation, however, would be that the largest challenge that they have to overcome to break into the field is the preconceived notions members of the field have about women or the given minority. This was abundantly evident in the environment of the movie Hidden Figures . Katherine has to deal with this with respect to all of the white engineers whose math she is checking. Due to the fact that she is black and a woman, the perception is that she is not as good as the engineers. At one point in the film, she is told that she cannot put her name on the document that she authored because "computers don't author documents."  Both Dorothy and Mary have to deal with their own obstacles in the movie, and they all end up breaking into their respective areas. Clearly the obstacle they faced in th

By: Keith MacDonell - kmacdone Like any incident that results in loss of human life, the Challenger disaster was a tragedy that we wish had never occurred. We also discussed this incident in the capstone chemical engineering Process Design class last year. The tragedy is made even greater by the fact that it could have been avoided if NASA and Morton Thiokol had not ignored the concerns of the Thiokol engineering staff. This disaster was the direct result of a faulty O-ring. According to the article "Remembering Roger Boisjoly, Challenger disaster whistleblower," Roger Boisjoly, an engineer working for Morton Thiokol, "warned managers that O-rings used to seal joints in the booster rockets could fail at freezing temperatures."  His warning was strongly worded saying, "The result would be a catastrophe of the highest order - loss of human life." Unfortunately his prediction came true when one of the O-rings in the right rocket booster failed, resulting

By: Keith MacDonell - kmacdone I believe diversity is an old, old, wooded ship used during the Civil War era (just kidding)...I  believe that diversity in any workplace is very important for one reason; it brings together people of vastly different backgrounds who will approach problems in unique ways, allowing the best possible solution to be reached. However, this striving for x number of people to fill a diversity quota can become an issue when it results in hiring someone who is less qualified for the job. The PBS NEWSHOUR article by Murrey Jacobson, which discusses the diversity data from Google, shows a drastic lack of diversity in the Google workplace. It quotes a senior vice president of Google, Laszlo Bock, saying, "We're not where we want to be when it comes to diversity." Looking at their numbers, I would have to agree that their workforce in the tech department is definitely lacking in diversity. I have to imagine that this lack of diversity is negatively

By: Keith MacDonell - kmacdone My snapshot assessment of the question "can men and women have it all?" would have been to say absolutely! But after thinking about it for a few seconds, I realized that I don't really think this is the case. For both parents to "have it all" seems almost impossible when intense, long-hour jobs are the norm. My family life has always been very blessed, and before stopping to assess it for a few minutes, I would have said that both my parents had it all. Looking back, however, this was not the case in the sense of having fulfilling jobs and raising a family. Both my parents are medical doctors: my mom works as an emergency room doctor while my dad works as a gastroenterologist. When I was little, both my parents worked full time while an au pair took care of me and my brothers during the day. Both my parents would be home around dinner to eat with the family and hang out/do some activity after dinner. At this point, it would see

By Keith MacDonell - kmacdone Our new code of ethics does a fairly good job providing a comprehensive overview of the issues that would be encountered in the day to day life of a Computer Science and Engineering student and the University of Notre Dame. It covers general morals, class work, group behavior, side projects, career issues, and catholic values. Many codes of ethics tend to focus on how an individual's actions can affect those around them. In my opinion, one of the highlights of our new code of ethics is how actions benefit/harm the individual committing them. The portion of our code of ethics that deals with cheating on classwork demonstrates this. Many documents delineating a code of ethics would probably focus on the fact that cheating negatively impacts others by artificially inflating the grade of the individual over that of his/her classmates. However, our document focused more on the detrimental effects on the individual cheating. When an individual cheats, he i

By Keith MacDonell - kmacdone Despite ultimately deciding to forgo a job in the chemical engineering field for completing a Masters in Computer Science, I did still go through the interview process my junior year for an internship. Overall, the process of applying for internships and participating in interviews was very frustrating and ultimately disappointing. The frustration started at the very beginning with application process itself. The Notre Dame job site seems to only be geared beneficial to specific majors. If, for example, you are a mechanical engineering or civil engineering major, then there are plenty of companies listed looking for both internship and job candidates. As a chemical engineering undergrad, however, this was not the case. As I recall, there were maybe three or four companies the entire two semesters I was looking for internships that were interested in offering internships directly related to my major, definitely not enough to help the 93 students in my c