Building Leaders: A National Examination of the Leadership Capacities Within Engineering Undergraduate Students

• In Event: 52.046 - Career and Leadership Development of College Students

Abstract

To examine the current state of leadership education of engineering students, we tested how engineering students’ leadership experiences and outcomes might systemically differ from non-engineering students using a national sample of 90,444 college students, encompassing 101 higher education institutions total. Results suggest that engineering students are less involved in group experiences in high school, but do not differ from comparable peers in self-reported leadership capacity coming to college. The involvement gap continues throughout their higher education, particularly in terms of co-curricular groups, participation in leadership training initiatives, and in the degree to which they can identity faculty mentors. Results suggest engineering students’ ability to interact on diverse teams remains depressed. Implications and recommendations for leadership educators will be discussed.

Authors

• Clinton M. Stephens, Emporia State University

• David Michael Rosch, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign