Curricular and co-curricular leadership learning for engineering students

Abstract

In recent years engineering educators have been encouraged to blend technical and professional learning in their curricular and co-curricular programming (EC, 2009; NAE, 2004). Our paper describes a multifaceted leadership learning program developed to achieve this goal by infusing reflective, experiential learning into an otherwise technically oriented discipline. The program was designed by a collaborative team of educators and researchers with backgrounds in engineering, education, psychology, and industry and offers a range of learning experiences using diverse pedagogical strategies. The content covers four realms of leadership corresponding to four levels of analysis: self, team, organization, and society. Learning experiences include elective academic courses, co-curricular workshop programs, guest lectures in core courses, seminars, department based leadership groups, and panel discussions. In this paper, we describe the program goals, curricular and co-curricular initiatives and early research findings in order to scaffold an emerging discussion about engineering leadership education in Canada. Informal feedback from students who have participated in our program provides us with preliminary evidence that students are learning, that they value the learning opportunities afforded by our program and that our initiative is enabling significant personal growth.