Engineering Leadership Education: Catalyzing Long-Term Personal and Professional Growth

Abstract

The Troost Institute for Leadership Education in Engineering (Troost ILead) has been actively engaged in developing the leadership capacity of engineers since its inception of 2002. Through a suite of leadership programming—both curricular and co-curricular, a robust research team, and our active industry-university Community of Practice we work towards our vision of engineers leading change to build a better world.’  After 16 years of dedicated work, we conducted a mixed method study to discover and understand the lasting impact of our work. 806 alumni responded to our survey and 25 interviews were conducted. This study provides evidence that engineering leadership programming can and does catalyze long-lasting personal and professional growth for undergraduate and graduate students. This paper presents our findings and the implications for engineering leadership education.