Proposing a University Core Course in Leadership Innovation in Engineering

Self-development, with the goal of students becoming more effective leaders and team players, is a primary goal of 21st Century universities providing value. Innovation and leadership skills learned in this course have application to personal and professional relationships, work and lifelong learning goals. This paper details the proposal for a new addition to the Core Curriculum at The University of Texas at El Paso being designed to meet these skills: EL 1301, an entering students' course in Engineering Innovation and Leadership. Through the course, engineering students will gain a foundation of knowledge of innovation, technological and leadership advancement in modern society, develop principles of personal, professional and social responsibility for living in a diverse world, and advance intellectual and practical skills that are essential for all learning. The course foundational component area intent includes foci on on all six Texas Common Core Objectives: Critical Thinking Skills (CT), Communication Skills (COM), Empirical and Quantitative Skills (EQS), Teamwork (TW), Social responsibility (SR) and Personal Responsibility (PR). We detail these objectives and the methods of assessment. Through this course students will learn about themselves, about others, and about innovations (change) and engineering sciences. Students will learn through inquiry of the process by which arts, business, science and mathematics are utilized to develop critical thinking competencies, and though engaging in creative thinking will enhance their self-learning and future success. The empirical results of cognitive science will be used to illustrate the importance of understanding preconceptions, cognitive frameworks, and metacognition. Students will be able to apply this inquiry-based framework to research, scholarship, and learning with the goal of using UTEP Edge experiences to build success in their future in engineering. This course advances individual leadership development through providing a framework for understanding the elements of innovation and organization's leadership development system. The course provides students with the foundations of leadership and innovation capacity in organizations. This course ties together and integrates many initiatives stemming from different areas of expertise with the primary goal to be to present knowledge in a way that students can use in their efforts to create leadership development experiences. We will specifically focus on how leadership skills effect the outcomes of engineering processes and engineering teamwork so as to enhance both individual and organizational leadership capacity.