Faculty Members’ Perceptions of Engineering Students’ Preparedness for Leadership Competencies

To help engineering students gain the skills and knowledge necessary for their careers, academic programs are designed to develop student outcomes to meet industry needs. Workforce preparation requires both technical and professional skills. Leadership, is the nexus of technical and professional skills, is a skill employers expect engineering graduates to possess because it facilitates advancement throughout an engineer’s career. To develop students’ career preparation, this study examines faculty members’ perceptions of engineering students’ preparedness in leadership competencies. This work is part of a larger study examining faculty members’ perceptions of leadership and their roles in preparing engineering students for careers. This paper specifically seeks to answer this research question: What are engineering faculty members’ perceptions of students’ leadership competencies for career preparation? To address this research question, a qualitative approach was utilized that included in-depth interviews with 12 engineering faculty members at five US universities. The interview was designed to understand the ways that faculty members prepare their students for careers and their perspectives and practices related to leadership. During the interviews, the researcher provided a quote illustrating the relationship between the technical and professional skills expected from students and their employability: “Construction is a people business: In this business you're hired for your technical skills, fired for your lack of people skills, promoted for your management skills.” Participants were asked to contextualize the statement in their own discipline and describe their perceptions of leadership given the conceptualization of industry as a people business. The interview transcripts were analyzed deductively to ascertain perceptions of technical, management, and people skills and understand faculty members’ perspectives on students’ preparation. The findings suggested that faculty members (1) believed that students are under-prepared for the professional skills required in the engineering industry, (2) promoted students’ experiences outside the classroom as a way to improve professional skills, and (3) expressed mixed perceptions of requiring leadership education in college. This work contributes to the growing body of literature on developing engineering students with leadership competencies to support career preparedness. This work also helps illuminate faculty members’ different perceptions of leadership for students’ employability.