2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Strategic networking is an important practice for both students and professionals, and it is essential for those professionals who will enter management and leadership roles. Nonetheless, research and anecdotal experience have indicated that both students and practicing professionals shy away from strategic networking, a stance that can hinder their careers. This paper reports on work-in-progress of design and evaluation of course interventions to promote strategic networking among undergraduate engineering students. These experiences are part of a course in Engineering Leadership at Texas A&M University. This paper offers first a literature review and then detail on our course content, networking activities, and a reflection connected with effective strategic networking for this class. Mixed-methods analysis of the results of student surveys provide insights of student opinions about strategic networking before and after they experience the course material and activities. The second of these surveys explores the effectiveness of each intervention as perceived by students. This latter survey also explores the potential positive effect of portraying strategic networking to doing good for others. While the students’ first survey opinions were slightly on the positive side of neutral about strategic networking, they nevertheless evidenced concerns over the ethics and authenticity of strategic networking and lack of skill in practicing it. Course content was oriented in part to portray strategic networking as a practice that benefits others and promotes worthy causes; it is servant leadership in practice. Student perceptions noticeably improved after experiencing the content. We also learned that a focus students benefited most from portrayal of networking as an ethical practice of servant leadership and by assisting skill development. It is important for workplace teams and their organizations for individual engineers to be effective practitioners of strategic networking. The paper concludes with guidance for instructors in helping students with the important skill of strategic networking for students throughout their time at college. Engineering faculty can equip students with practical and proven guidance and support to develop critical leadership skills for the workplace as they begin their careers.