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Background: How do Indigenous engineering students describe their engineering leadership development? The field of engineering has made only slow and modest progress at increasing the participation of Indigenous people; an identity-conscious focus on leadership in engineering may help connect the practice of engineering with Indigenous students’ motivations and values. Methods: This study utilized a grounded theory qualitative approach to understand how Indigenous engineering students at a U.S.-based university experience engineering leadership. We explored the experiences of four Indigenous engineering students through one interview and one focus group. Results: Students pointed out how Indigenous peoples had long engaged in engineering work before contact with European settlers, and they saw an opportunity for leadership in applying their engineering knowledge in ways that uplifted their home communities. Conclusion: In addition to ways that engineering programs can better support Indigenous students who aspire to become practicing engineers, our study pointed to new directions engineering programs could take to frame engineering work as providing a toolkit to improve one’s community to leverage a wider set of motivations for entering engineering among many different communities underrepresented in engineering, including Indigenous students. 

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. 

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.