Virtual Conference
July 26, 2021
July 26, 2021
July 19, 2022
NSF Grantees Poster Session
6
10.18260/1-2--37119
https://peer.asee.org/37119
332
William J. Schell holds a Ph.D. in Industrial and Systems Engineering – Engineering Management from the University of Alabama in Huntsville and M.S. and B.S. degrees in Industrial and Management Engineering from Montana State University (MSU). He is Associate Professor and Program Coordinator of Industrial and Management Systems Engineering, Associate Director of the Montana Engineering Education Research Center, and a KEEN Leader at MSU with research interests in engineering education and the role of leadership and culture in process improvement. His research is supported by the NSF, private foundations, and industry and has received numerous national and international awards. He is an elected Fellow of the American Society for Engineering Management and serves as an Associate Editor for the Engineering Management Journal . Prior to his academic career, Schell spent 14 years in industry where he held leadership positions focused on process improvement and organizational development.
Bryce E. Hughes is an Assistant Professor in Adult and Higher Education at Montana State University, and holds a Ph.D. in Higher Education and Organizational Change from the University of California, Los Angeles, as well as an M.A. in Student Development Administration from Seattle University and a B.S. in General Engineering from Gonzaga University. His research interests include teaching and learning in engineering, STEM education policy, and diversity and equity in STEM.
Brett Tallman is currently a Doctoral student in Engineering at Montana State University (MSU), with focus on engineering leadership. His previous degrees include a Masters degree in Education from MSU (active learning in an advanced quantum mechanics environment) and a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Cornell. Prior to his academic career, he worked in the biotech (Lead Engineer), product design, and automotive (Toyota) sectors for 14 years, and is a licensed Professional Engineer. He has also taught high school and attended seminary. You can find more of his engineering education work at educadia.org or on his YouTube channel.
Monika Blue Kwapisz (they/them) is an undergraduate at Montana State University studying Industrial and Management Systems Engineering with a minor in Mathematics. Monika is the former president of MSU's Out in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (oSTEM) chapter, a cross-country ski coach, and an avid outdoors-person.
Tessa is in her fifth year of study at Montana State University and is entering into the graduate Industrial and Management Systems Engineering Department in the following year. Her interests focus in organizational development, human resource development, and implementation consulting.
Most approaches to develop leadership in engineering students center on learning leadership skills or cultivating leadership traits. These approaches show mixed results in terms of longer-term translation of these learning outcomes into graduates holding leadership roles in the workplace or viewing themselves as leaders. Grounded in research on engineering identity, this project posited that an identity-based approach to engineering leadership may provide a more efficacious way to develop leadership as part of engineering formation that integrates leadership into engineers’ professional identities. To explore this proposition, this project employed a sequential, mixed-methods study resulting in development of a grounded theory of engineering leadership for undergraduate engineering students.
This paper shares an overview of the project’s path during the funded period and highlights initial findings of how engineering undergraduates define engineering leadership. Starting from the assumption that the formation of engineers is fundamentally an identity development process, the framework for this project combined Lave and Wenger’s communities of practice model to understand development of an engineering identity with Komives, et al.’s Leadership Identity Development Model for understanding how engineering students cultivate a self-concept as a leader. Overall, findings helped reveal how the components of engineering identity and leadership identity converge in the development of an engineering leadership identity among undergraduate students.
Schell, W. J., & Hughes, B. E., & Tallman, B., & Kwapisz, M., & Sybesma, T. (2021, July), Examining the Components of an Engineering Leadership Identity Paper presented at 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual Conference. 10.18260/1-2--37119
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