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In an era of scientific and engineering advancement, we need engineers who have a diversified skillset. More specifically, in order to solve many of the complex problems faced today, industry is calling for engineers who combine their technical expertise with leadership qualities. These qualities can be developed in engineering students’ formative years as undergraduates. However, how leadership qualities are developed in engineering students is still not well understood in engineering education community. As part of a larger project, this work reviews the development of a pilot intervention with freshman engineering students aimed at furthering that understanding. This intervention was informed by a combination of quantitative data analysis, qualitative exploration, and engineering leadership identity theory. Quantitative analysis was based on two national data sets; Qualitative exploration was based on 20 engineering focus groups involving 17 majors from three universities. The goal of this research was to identify an intervention that would impact students in ways that cultivated an engineering leadership identity. To develop this intervention, characteristics of impactful experiences in the development of engineering leadership identity were explored using the data described previously. A transcendental phenomenological approach was used to explore both the content of the experiences (textural) and the context of those experiences (structural). By focusing on the most impactful experiences, a three-pronged intervention was identified. The data indicate that the development of an engineering leadership identity is largely influenced by a bifurcation between technical and interpersonal (or professional) aspects of the profession. Moreover, the data indicates that well-executed group projects and corresponding support activities are instrumental in engineering student leadership development. 

Undergraduate research is a common method for students to gain experience in fields related to their major during their time in college. While involvement in research has many possible outcomes for undergraduates, the study of its effect on engineering, leadership, and engineering leadership identity development is underdeveloped and inconclusive. To contribute to this area of study the experiences of four undergraduate engineering students who were involved in research were examined through combined collective case study and autoethnographic methods. The research the students participated in centered on understanding the development of the identities of interest in engineering students more broadly, giving the four students repeated opportunities to engage with the subject. This combination of involvement in research and exposure to engineering, leadership, and engineering leadership concepts was found to have mixed results. The impact on the student's own identity development was inconsistent, ranging from positive to negligible to negative. It is hypothesized that this discrepancy can be attributed to diversity of individual experience both before and during involvement in research. 

Identity is central to learning in engineering, and development of an engineering identity is a core aspect of the education and training process for engineers. Identification with engineering has been shown to assist in the recruitment of diverse students into the field and improve student retention among all groups. For these reasons, engineering educators should consider the formation of professional identity as they make decisions about how to best prepare graduates to enter their chosen fields. In order to utilize professional identity, these educators must understand how their students conceptualize engineering identity. This work seeks to promote that understanding by investigating conceptualizations undergraduate engineers hold of engineering identity, their self-view as engineers, and the sources of these views. Using data collected from pilot focus groups of ten undergraduate students at two different U.S. engineering schools, we applied a grounded theory approach to explore these topics. This exploration found many elements consistent with prior work in engineering identity (e.g. a focus on technical knowledge defining engineering) while adding new elements, such as students’ surprise at the breadth of engineering and desire to use their engineering education as a vehicle to positively impact the world. 

Leaders in industry and government are calling for increasing innovation in STEM fields to maintain the nation's economic competitiveness [15]. Solving today's complex challenges will require cooperation among experts from many fields. Successful leaders must harness the diverse capabilities of teams composed of these experts and be technically skilled. Undergraduate engineering students can fill this need by learning how to be effective leaders during their formation as engineers. Unfortunately, many engineering students graduate with little development of leadership skills; engineering educators do not currently have a sufficient understanding of how engineering students develop into leaders. This NSF ECE supported project seeks to improve educators’ understanding of the interaction between leadership and engineering identities in the formation of undergraduate engineers. This work postulates that a cohesive engineering leadership identity should exist at the intersection of engineering and leadership identities. Now entering its second year the project is wrapping up its quantitative phase and is beginning the qualitative phase of investigation. This paper discusses the process of developing the qualitative research protocols used to explore identity formation in groups of undergraduate engineers at three different campuses. The discussion shows the formation of the protocol using prior work in leadership and engineering identity constructs from both this project and the literature. The protocol development, methods, and findings from early interviews are presented. Initial findings suggest several factors are important to engineering educators interested in developing engineers who are ready to lead. The findings include evidence of some level of conflict between engineering identity and leadership identity as well as further evidence of engineering students’ compartmentalization of leadership as outside of engineering. In addition, this paper includes the learning outcomes of three REU students who joined the project to assist with the development of the qualitative protocol. The REU students made significant contributions to initial data collection as participants and observers. The REU students were the lead authors of this paper. 

In order to lead the social process required to solve society’s grandest challenges and ensure that the capabilities of an expanded engineering workforce are successfully harnessed, new engineers must be more than just technical experts, they must also be technical leaders. Thankfully, greater numbers of engineering educators are recognizing this need and are consequently establishing engineering leadership certificates, minors, and even full degree programs through centers at universities throughout the country. However, for these programs to reach their full potential, engineering educators must be successful in integrating leadership into the very identity of engineers. This study seeks to better understand the relationship between engineering identity and leadership, so tools can be developed that enable engineering educators to more effectively integrate leadership into an engineering identity. This paper explores this relationship using a national sample of 918 engineering students who participated in the 2013 College Senior Survey (CSS). The CSS is administered by the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) at UCLA to college students at the end of their fourth year of college; data from the CSS are then matched to students’ prior responses on the 2009 Freshman Survey (TFS), which was administered when they first started college, to create a longitudinal sample. Using a leadership construct developed by HERI as the outcome variable, this work utilizes Hierarchical Linear Modelling (HLM) to examine the impact of engineering identity and a host of other factors shown to be important in college student development on leadership. HLM is especially appropriate since individual student cases are grouped by schools, and predictor variables include both student-level and institution-level variables. The leadership construct, referred to as leadership self-efficacy in this work, includes self-rated growth in leadership ability, self-rating of leadership ability relative to one’s peers, participation in a leadership role and/or leadership training, and perceived effectiveness leading an organization. The primary independent variable of interest was a factor measuring engineering identity comprised of items available on both the TFS and CSS instruments. Including this measure of engineering identity from two different time periods in the model provides the relationship between engineering identity in the fourth year and leadership self-efficacy, controlling for engineering identity in the first year as a pretest. Statistically significant results were found across each of the areas tested, including the fourth-year engineering identity factor as well as several collegiate experiences, pre-college experiences, major, and institutional variables. Taken together, these results present a nuanced picture of what matters to predicting leadership outcomes for undergraduate engineering students. For example, while engineering identity is a significant positive predictor of the leadership construct, computer engineers score lower than mechanical engineers on leadership, while interacting with faculty appears to enhance leadership self-efficacy.