Assessment of the Rose-Hulman Leadership Academy

Giving students the ability to be entrepreneurial leaders is a potentially valuable outcome for an engineering program. Entrepreneurial leadership consists of communication, teamwork, and problem solving skills that are important to careers in STEM fields, including engineering. For engineering, in particular, entrepreneurship and leadership skills relate directly to accreditation outcomes that every undergraduate engineering program must address. In this study, we describe the assessment of a three day leadership academy program at a small, technical school in the Midwestern United States. Activities in the academy consisted of seminars on leadership styles and communication comingled with problem solving and teamwork activities in which students were asked to analyze and apply the ideas they had learned. This academy is part of a grant from the Kern Entrepreneurial Engineering Network, and activities were tailored to address specific outcomes from that grant. Multiple forms of data were collected to assess the student experience at this leadership academy. To assess the application of ideas from seminars during activities, program facilitators, consisting of faculty and attendees of previous iterations of the academy, were asked to fill out open-ended assessment forms. These forms were designed to highlight ideas that students were implementing well, and areas that were in need of improvement. Additionally, pre and post surveys were administered to all program participants, measuring entrepreneurial mindset and student perceptions of program outcomes. Finally, voluntary semistructured interviews were conducted after the leadership academy concluded. These interviews addressed outcomes that were not covered by surveys and facilitator comments, and provided further insight into how students perceived the academy. Our analysis of results shows that academy activities positively influence student skills in teamwork, communication and problem solving.