2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Design has historically been a key topic taught broadly in engineering education programs, while the topic of leadership development in engineering education programs is relatively new. This paper will summarize the findings of a comprehensive literature review on design outcomes, leadership outcomes, and the intersection of the two in an engineering education setting. Design courses such as senior design often teach topics such as professional skills, teamwork, project management, productive communication, and ethics in addition to technical knowledge. Similarly, research on engineering leadership development in civil engineering has summarized a list of outcomes such as communication, teamwork, vision, interpersonal skills, ethics, organization, decision making, and time management in addition to technical knowledge. These various similarities in outcomes of the two topic areas (communication, teamwork, ethics, etc.) drives further exploration. Additionally, both design and leadership are described as social processes: the process of each topic values concepts such as iteration, systems thinking, bias toward action, and continuous learning.

Based on these observations, a systematic and comprehensive literature review will be conducted to identify both areas of intersection in the engineering learning outcomes for design and for leadership as well as summarize the points that clearly differentiate the two concepts. This literature review is Phase 1 of a two-year planned study. Phase 2 will include exploring the perceptions of these topics as held by experts and educators who specialize in the areas of design and of leadership in the field of engineering. Once this exploratory study helps us to understand the current landscape, one goal is to help design educators understand what leadership concepts are already included in their courses and how their courses can be adapted to more thoroughly fulfill the need for leadership education, as required by ABET outcomes and the engineering profession.