Leadership And Mentoring In Undergraduate Engineering Programs

As educators we often ask our Industrial Advisory Board (IAB) which qualities and skills they would most like to see in new engineering graduates. Of course, good technical skills in the given discipline are always a priority and are what we as educators most closely monitor with our grading systems. However, following close behind are good oral and written communication skills, the ability to work in interdisciplinary teams, and leadership skills. In the chemical engineering department we have actively worked to introduce oral and written communication and group (team) work across the entire curriculum -starting with the freshman orientation course all the way through to the capstone senior level laboratory. We are beginning to introduce interdisciplinary courses, where students bring their “domain competency” to a large team project. However, we have done very little in the way of focusing on putting the students in “true leadership positions” such as they might encounter in industry as group or project leaders responsible for several engineers.