Wanted: Leaders in engineering

The engineering field has a growing demand for leaders: people who can manage a company or solve society’s knottiest problems. As a result, universities are increasingly emphasizing leadership training. The University of Texas at El Paso’s College of Engineering, for example, recently introduced the country’s first bachelor’s of science degree in engineering leadership.

“We need to get into the public and policy debate about how we are going to deal with security, food, deal with economic aspects of sustainability, water, energy,” says Jeffrey S. Russell in an interview with PE magazine, a publication of the National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE). “These are heavy-duty issues that have a physical presence, but yet are placed in a social construct and economic backdrop. We need to figure out how to exhibit leadership and facilitate discourse.”
Russell is an NSPE member, as well as the vice provost for lifelong learning and dean of the Division of Continuing Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He likes the idea of a nontraditional engineering program in leadership, though he acknowledges that not every student will require such programs to gain the needed skills.
In his interview with PE’s Danielle Boykin, Russell notes that students in traditional engineering programs both at the undergraduate and graduate levels have many opportunities to develop as leaders. “There are plenty of engineering programs that have good cooperative education, summer abroad, and summer internship experiences,” he says. “They can also work on projects through student organizations or hold student government or professional society offices, which will contribute to their leadership training.”
Russell encourages engineering departments to experiment with nontraditional programs in leadership, but he also believes strongly in the value of experience in building tomorrow’s leaders. “It’s the technology, it’s the people, it’s the process, and dealing with unexpected situations,” he says. “They’re going to have to spend time being a lifelong learner and think about how they can integrate their experiences.”