An Integrated Leadership and Innovation Curriculum for Undergraduate Mechanical Engineering

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This project is implementing a unique curriculum that teaches leadership and innovation in an integrated, non-obtrusive way to mechanical engineering undergraduate students. Such skills are critical for the nation to remain competitive in a world market. The project's research component is helping identify effective ways of integrating these skills into an engineering curriculum without sacrificing technical content. The project team is well qualified and diverse, consisting of engineering faculty working with business faculty together with the University's Center for Teaching Excellence. This synergistic team is providing the engineering and leadership content knowledge with proper educational pedagogy and evaluation methods to make the project successful.Assessment and evaluation activities consist of quantitative and qualitative approaches that address both student learning and attitudes. Qualitative assessment also includes focus group interviews of students. What researchers intend to explore is whether or not integrating leadership and innovation materials into a traditional technical engineering program provides sufficient depth to improve student skills. Results are also helping the education community better understand how to teach these important skills in a cost effective manner, by integrating them into existing curricula.