2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

In response to accreditation requirements and calls for more holistic engineering education, programs are emerging around the world that are grappling with how to facilitate the professional development of engineering students, particularly related to their leadership development. These programs have necessarily sought ways to evaluate whether their pedagogical approach is having a measurable impact on the leadership development of their engineering students. Though instruments for general leadership assessments have existed for some time, as recently as the ASEE 2023 annual conference, the engineering leadership research community is still pointing to a need for a new assessment instrument.  

Our goal is to develop a survey instrument that measures students’ engineering leadership development. Our first step in this process is to solicit input from a range of current and future engineering leaders to explore how they prioritize aspects of engineering leadership. In this paper, we pilot our method for collecting input from individuals already familiar with engineering leadership. A refined method will be generated based on the results of this study for use in data collection with a broader audience.  

We apply a Q-sort methodology to examine how engineering leaders and managers of engineers prioritize aspects of engineering leadership for inclusion in the survey instrument. To generate our Q-set, we are leveraging the Contextual Engineering Leadership Development framework to identify relevant theory from which to extract potential survey items. To pilot our method, nine mid-level and senior engineering leaders and managers of engineers participated in a Q-sort of 60 items. 

Using exploratory factor analysis, we extracted three key factors corresponding to three viewpoints of engineering leadership development. Each viewpoint emphasized a different aspect of the CELD framework; viewpoint 1 highlighted a leadership development model centered on team effectiveness and affective behavior, viewpoint 2 emphasized the importance of establishing an ethic of care and a strong engineering identity, and viewpoint 3 focused on emotional intelligence and social awareness as key components of leadership development. These factors provide preliminary insights into the dimensions of engineering development valued by the mid-level and senior engineering leaders and managers in this pilot study.

Q methodology proved to be an effective tool for capturing and interpreting complex perspectives of practicing engineering leaders and managers, allowing us to refine our approach to measuring engineering leadership development. By systematically measuring key aspects of students’ engineering leadership development, this instrument will allow us to validate and refine the proposed CELD model. The implications for engineering education are significant, as this framework can guide curriculum design, inform instructional strategies, and enhance the overall development of future engineering leaders.