Assessment of engineering students' leadership competencies

Sibel Özgen, Olga Sánchez-Galofré, Joan R. Alabart, Magda Medir, Francesc Giralt

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

25 Scopus citations

Abstract

Leadership development has become increasingly important in engineering education as companies look for engineers with leadership, communication, and teamwork skills. To embed these competencies into engineering curricula, a competency-based educational model has been implemented in which 4th-year engineering students led design project teams made up of 1st-year students. The study described in this paper had two aims. The first was to determine which leadership competencies were exhibited by the 4th-year students. The second was to assess their perceived leadership effectiveness. We identified leadership competencies using the behavioral event interview technique and measured leadership effectiveness using a 360-degree assessment. The results demonstrate that the student leaders exhibited the following competencies most frequently: commitment to learning, interpersonal communication, teamwork, and results orientation. The results also indicate that the 1st-year students perceived the student leaders' leadership effectiveness as satisfactory. The educational model described in this paper can easily be implemented in other institutions to encourage and nurture leadership talent in students.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)65-75
Number of pages11
JournalLeadership and Management in Engineering
Volume13
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - Apr 2013

Keywords

  • Engineering Education
  • Leadership
  • Personnel Management
  • Professional Personnel
  • Teamwork

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