Beyond Professionalism To Leadership: Leveraging Leadership For A Lifetime

In 2000, our Industry Advisory Board asked how we knew that we were achieving our mission, how could we determine that our students were becoming the leaders as we claimed and, further, how would we know what our program was contributing to student personal growth? The ensuing discussion among industry representatives, faculty and students on what it meant to be “professional” and a “leader” resulted in the creation of a three-part course in our Master of Science in Technology Management degree program. The three parts – one at the beginning, middle and end of the degree program, were designed to determine the students’ initial leadership capacities and then engage the student in more self-awareness assessment, planning and developing a learning roadmap. Finally, we would show how the students had grown their capacities throughout the program. At the onset of the program, students are assessed on their emotional capacity, their leadership characteristics, their personality inventory, competencies that align with program objectives and their life-learning process. The resulting assessment profile helps the student to plan for their graduate program-learning journey. They intentionally set forth a roadmap and identify a network that will support their learning throughout the program, using key faculty, friends and business colleagues on-the-job to enhance their learning agenda. They come to recognize themselves as leaders in the making. They make commitments to themselves for how they intend to develop on-the-job as well as on the campus and in their communities. Throughout the learning process, they have checkpoints built in to re-assess themselves and witness their progress. They focus their leadership journey on self, their team, their organizations and their intended contributions. By the end of the program, they receive feedback from all stakeholder groups who are witnessing their progress and commenting on their results. P ge 955.1 Proceedings of the 2004 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2004,American Society for Engineering Education Students so far are excited about their learning pursuits, engaging others to support them and are demonstrating their leadership talents as they learn, stretch and grow. They feel real strength and power in coming to better understand themselves and taking charge of their own learning outcomes. We, as faculty, are prepared to support their journeys and wonder with them about their lifelong possibilities.