2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The John Lof Leadership Academy (JLLA) at the University of Connecticut (UConn) is an innovative engineering leadership program for graduate students, it was founded in 2018 as a “for us, by us” philosophy. John Lof Scholars develops through focused training, specialized workshops, and active learning. In October 2022, JLLA inducted its fourth cohort bringing the total number of its members to 68.

An integral aspect of the JLLA curriculum is creating culturally competent visionaries by means of engaging communities inside and outside the university to promote and provide mentoring and support. Run by graduate students from various departments, the JLLA empowers its members to develop as leaders in their fields through specialized training focused on leadership through the lens of the individual member’s career and personal goals. Academy members focus their time on honing their skills through hands-on learning and practice, which is done through collaboration and outreach both internal and external to the UConn community. As a result, JLLA helps to bridge the gap between traditional academic graduate studies and the workforce demand for practical and applied leadership skills.

JLLA select its members through a rigorous annual process that examines their academic standing and achievements, as well as their past experiences and commitment towards engaging with different communities. Once accepted, members form a cohort that embarks on a two-year curriculum in which they split up into committees to explore leadership through workshops, projects, and individualized assessments focused on topics such as conflict resolution, leadership values and introspection, public speaking, feedback skills, adversity and diversity, ethics, etc. Completing the program results in myriad benefits for members, including opportunities such as one-on-one mentoring with members of industry and UConn Engineering leaders, individualized career fairs, resume building, exclusive JLLA related grants and fellowships, faculty social hours (interdisciplinary networking), and a professional community to make friends, have fun, and be a force for change.

JLLA has cultivated leaders with various personalities and leadership styles and values diversity in leaders. The program will further adapt to individual needs by creating “focus groups” based on specific skills that members would like to improve. Members will continue to evaluate their growth in following semesters to measure the success of the leadership curriculum and confirm the effectiveness of the program.

At the beginning of the Spring 2020, JLLA invested in Mind Garden’s leadership evaluation tool to quantify the success of the group’s curriculum. The program’s multifactor leadership questionnaire (MLQ), provides a holistic assessment of individual leadership by comparing self-assessment to assessment by: higher level, lower level and same level peers. The assumption was comparing each of these evaluations will create individualized action plans to achieve transformational leaders. However, preliminary analysis of the first survey (2020) and resurvey (2021) showed challenges in finding peers and control group at the 3 levels. Hence, we are losing more than half of the participants during assessments (from 20 participants, only 10 ‘above’ respondents and 9 ‘below’ respondents). Currently, we are in the process of finding other assessment tools to measure the progress of each individual leadership.