Seattle, Washington
June 14, 2015
June 14, 2015
June 17, 2015
978-0-692-50180-1
2153-5965
Entrepreneurship & Engineering Innovation Division – Evaluating Student Behaviors and Attitudes
Entrepreneurship & Engineering Innovation
20
26.264.1 - 26.264.20
10.18260/p.23603
https://peer.asee.org/23603
577
Philip Brown is a PhD candidate in the Department of Engineering Education at Virginia Tech, and was part of the Rising Engineering Education Faculty Fellowship program at Rose-Hulman in the Fall of 2014.
Dr. Julia M. Williams is Executive Director of the Office of Institutional Research, Planning, and Assessment & Professor of English at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. Her research areas include technical communication, assessment, accreditation, and the development of change management strategies for faculty and staff. Her articles have appeared in the Journal of Engineering Education, International Journal of Engineering Education, IEEE Transaction on Professional Communication, and Technical Communication Quarterly, among others.
Shannon M. Sipes has served as the director of assessment at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology since 2004. She is a unique resource for faculty with her background in social science and education combined with experience applying it to STEM fields. Shannon holds B.S. and M.A. degrees in psychology and is currently finishing her Ph.D. in curriculum and instruction with a focus on higher education. In her current professional role, Shannon performs assessment functions at all levels, from small classroom projects through assessment at the institute level. Additionally, she spends a substantial portion of her time collaborating with faculty on educational research projects and grant-funded projects requiring an assessment component. Her own research interests are in inquiry methodology, gifted students, and curriculum design.
Assessment of the Institution X Leadership AcademyGiving students the ability to be entrepreneurial leaders is a potentially valuable outcome for anengineering program. Entrepreneurial leadership consists of communication, teamwork, andproblem solving skills that are important to careers in STEM fields, including engineering. Forengineering, in particular, entrepreneurial leadership skills relate directly to accreditationoutcomes that every undergraduate engineering program must address. In this study, we describethe assessment of a three day leadership academy program at a small, technical school in theMidwestern United States. Activities in the academy consisted of seminars on leadership stylesand communication comingled with problem solving and teamwork activities in which studentswere asked to analyze and apply the ideas they had learned. This academy is part of a grant fromthe Kern Entrepreneurial Engineering Network (KEEN), and activities were tailored to addressspecific outcomes from that grant. Multiple forms of data were collected to assess the studentexperience at this leadership academy. To assess the application of ideas from seminars duringactivities, program facilitators, consisting of faculty and attendees of previous iterations of theacademy, were asked to fill out open-ended assessment forms. These forms were designed tohighlight ideas that students were implementing well, and areas that were in need ofimprovement. Additionally, pre and post surveys were administered to all program participants,measuring leadership self-efficacy, entrepreneurial mindset, and student perceptions of programoutcomes. Finally, voluntary semi-structured interviews were conducted after the leadershipacademy concluded. These interviews addressed outcomes that were not covered by surveys andfacilitator comments, and provided further insight into how students perceived the academy. Ouranalysis of results shows that academy activities positively influence student skills in leadership,teamwork, communication and problem solving.
Brown, P. R., & Williams, J. M., & Sipes, S. M. (2015, June), Assessment of the Rose-Hulman Leadership Academy Paper presented at 2015 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Seattle, Washington. 10.18260/p.23603
ASEE holds the copyright on this document. It may be read by the public free of charge. Authors may archive their work on personal websites or in institutional repositories with the following citation: © 2015 American Society for Engineering Education. Other scholars may excerpt or quote from these materials with the same citation. When excerpting or quoting from Conference Proceedings, authors should, in addition to noting the ASEE copyright, list all the original authors and their institutions and name the host city of the conference. - Last updated April 1, 2015