The Engineering Leadership Development Division: A Journey of Becoming and Belonging

This paper aims to tell our division's story of why we originated, what we have achieved, and what may lie ahead in terms of challenges and opportunities. Like a "State of the Union" address, it provides a personal perspective, but a perspective informed from working alongside many other officers since the origins of our division. I describe how two engineering professors, inspired by two publications on engineering leadership education, decided to lead the formal process of establishing our division within ASEE. While this was happening, a separate group of engineering leadership educators were planning a national conference on engineering leadership that, among other things, served to signal that our academic field was rapidly evolving as a valuable innovation in the development of future engineers. These were two of the forces that came together during the origins of our division. One of the most valued achievements during our "start-up" stage was providing a place of belonging for a diverse range of interested engineering educators. We grew from 215 to over a thousand members within a few years and have published 112 papers. These papers have collectively achieved 21,075 downloads from ASEE, and had our division not been formed, many of these ideas may never have been published. These and other meaningful achievements are described in this paper and they all point to our value as a new academic community. After about seven years of development, we will undoubtedly face many challenges in the future, including the needs to strengthen the credibility of our intellectual contributions and sharpen our strategic focus. I end the paper with a few suggestions about some timely opportunities to address in our future. These include the creation and publication of case studies to aide in our teaching and the exploration of the relationships between leadership and engineering, science, and technology. I also note that this is a good time to clarify some of the boundaries between engineering "leadership" and engineering "management". In sum, our division is the largest and likely the most important academic community on the topic of engineering leadership in North America. As the outgoing chair of our division, my hope in writing this paper is to inspire future educators to help make it a better place for our members and for those that we serve.