Emotional Intelligence for Aspiring Project Engineers

Eva Singleton

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Conference: 2025 ASEE Southeast Conference
Location: Mississippi State University, Mississippi
Publication Date: March 9, 2025
Start Date: March 9, 2025
End Date: March 11, 2025
Conference Session: Professional Papers
Tagged Topic: Professional Papers
Page Count: 8
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/54159
Download Count: 2

Paper Authors

biography

Eva Singleton The Citadel Military College

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Dr. Eva Singleton is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Engineering Leadership and Program Management (ELPM) at The Citadel Military College in Charleston, SC. As a certified Project Management Professional (PMP), she has worked across diverse industries, including government contracting, entrepreneurial endeavors, and technical services—developing adaptability, resilience, value creation, stewardship, systems thinking, and leadership.
Enthusiastic about sharing her expertise, Dr. Singleton is committed to helping individuals advance their careers, business, academic pursuits, and personal growth through project management principles, tools, and techniques. Her research explores the intersection of project management with business, engineering and STEM, social sciences, and family and consumer sciences.
Beyond academia, she actively contributes to the project management community and currently serves as VP of Special Events for PMI Charleston.

Dr. Singleton resides in Summerville, SC, with her loving husband and five children, embracing both the challenges and joys of life’s greatest project—family.

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Abstract

Emotional intelligence (EI) can play an influential role in enhancing the future careers of aspiring project engineers [1], [2], [3]. Using EI, project management competencies, and Tuckman’s Five Stages of Team Development, also known as the Tuckman’s Ladder, may prepare future project engineers to efficiently navigate various project environments [4], [5]. Engineers with EI may become more inclined to exert project management competencies such as effective communication, empathy, and conflict resolution skills [2]. The appropriate application of EI can improve self-awareness, emotional regulation, team motivation, job satisfaction, and the mental well-being among engineering professionals [1], [2]. The lack of EI and emotional agility among engineers in project-driven environments can lead to ineffective communication, emotional tensions, distrust, unresolved conflict, and greater exposure to project risks. Aspiring project engineers that apply EI can effectively self-manage through self-awareness, recognize, and respond to team members’ and other stakeholders’ emotional states effectively, all of which contribute to higher team performance and better decision making [1]. Onboarding newly graduated engineers in project environments equipped with EI, project management competencies, and an in depth understanding of Tuckman’s Ladder can provide needed preparation for authentic team development beyond the “team moon” or forming stage where team members and new hires are more inclined to be nice and pretentious. These alumni would be equipped to manage conflicts and stress strategically by using emotions to enhance thinking in the hopes to increase collaboration efforts within the team. People skills are needed to collaborate effectively with stakeholders [1], [2],[5]. It is not always the engineering discipline or technical skills that are hard to learn. In cases, the hard part for project engineers will be keeping peace on project teams because managing chaos is unique to the stakeholders that are engaged [6], [7]. The purpose of this paper is to study the importance of EI, project management competencies, and the Tuckman Ladder for aspiring project engineers to conduct further research.

Citation
Format

Singleton, E. (2025, March), Emotional Intelligence for Aspiring Project Engineers Paper presented at 2025 ASEE Southeast Conference , Mississippi State University, Mississippi. https://peer.asee.org/54159

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - Emotional intelligence (EI) can play an influential role in enhancing the future careers of aspiring project engineers [1], [2], [3]. Using EI, project management competencies, and Tuckman’s Five Stages of Team Development, also known as the Tuckman’s Ladder, may prepare future project engineers to efficiently navigate various project environments [4], [5]. Engineers with EI may become more inclined to exert project management competencies such as effective communication, empathy, and conflict resolution skills [2].
The appropriate application of EI can improve self-awareness, emotional regulation, team motivation, job satisfaction, and the mental well-being among engineering professionals [1], [2]. The lack of EI and emotional agility among engineers in project-driven environments can lead to ineffective communication, emotional tensions, distrust, unresolved conflict, and greater exposure to project risks. Aspiring project engineers that apply EI can effectively self-manage through self-awareness, recognize, and respond to team members’ and other stakeholders’ emotional states effectively, all of which contribute to higher team performance and better decision making [1]. 
Onboarding newly graduated engineers in project environments equipped with EI, project management competencies, and an in depth understanding of Tuckman’s Ladder can provide needed preparation for authentic team development beyond the “team moon” or forming stage where team members and new hires are more inclined to be nice and pretentious. These alumni would be equipped to manage conflicts and stress strategically by using emotions to enhance thinking in the hopes to increase collaboration efforts within the team. 
People skills are needed to collaborate effectively with stakeholders [1], [2],[5]. It is not always the engineering discipline or technical skills that are hard to learn. In cases, the hard part for project engineers will be keeping peace on project teams because managing chaos is unique to the stakeholders that are engaged [6], [7]. The purpose of this paper is to study the importance of EI, project management competencies, and the Tuckman Ladder for aspiring project engineers to conduct further research.

AU  - Eva Singleton
CY  - Mississippi State University, Mississippi
DA  - 2025/03/09
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Emotional Intelligence for Aspiring Project Engineers 
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/54159
ER  -