Preparing a 21st Century STEM Workforce: Defining & Measuring Leadership in Engineering Education

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This project aims to address the gap in understanding of how leadership competency is defined, developed, and measured in engineering undergraduates. Specifically, the goals are to: 1) investigate the definition of leadership as defined by engineering students, faculty, and industry; 2) develop a theoretical model of leadership development as perceived by undergraduate engineering students and faculty; 3) develop a survey instrument to measure leadership capacity and efficacy in engineering; and 4) collect and analyze data with an eye toward evaluating differences between or among major, gender, socio-economic status, generational status, and ethnicity. The impact of this project is the enabling of measurement of leadership competencies among engineers on a continuum from first year undergraduate students through graduation and into their careers as practicing engineers. The results of this project can be used to inform evidence-based curricular and co-curricular activities, policies and practices in engineering programs to improve the nation's capacity to prepare students in STEM careers.The project uses a multilevel, multiphase, multi-institutional, mixed methodology to: 1) generate a clear definition of engineering leadership from the perspectives of undergraduate students and faculty in engineering, ABET, and National Academy Engineering, and the construction industry; 2) develop a theoretical model describing leadership development among undergraduate engineering students; and 3) produce and pilot test an instrument to measure leadership competency (i.e., efficacy, capacity, and mastery) across a continuum from undergraduate engineering students to practicing professionals. The research plan is grounded in theories from engineering education and leadership studies and builds on the project team's previous work in producing a meta-synthesis of leadership in engineering. To address the interconnected outcomes, this project uses the following methods: three-round Delphi Study, Q-Sort, deductive analysis, a seven-step survey development protocol and grounded theory methods.