International Conference on Engineering Education – ICEE 2007 A Graduate Curriculum for Engineering Leadership

Abstract- The increasing global competition in technology industries puts a premium on those exceptional engineering leaders who can direct multidisciplinary teams to bring innovative technical ideas to the market in a short period of time meeting all cost goals. An educational program that would accelerate the development of such engineering leaders would be of great educational and societal value. We describe a new educational initiative, the Gordon Engineering Leadership Program, enabled by a gift from the Gordon Foundation. The curriculum of the program features a thesis-scale “Challenge Project ” based on the academic advisor/dissertation model, but directed toward commercialization or deployment of a new technology. The Challenge Project will be supported by new courses in “Engineering Leadership ” and “Scientific Foundations of Engineering ” to give the graduate a broad scientific framework to support rapid “back-of-the-envelope” quantitative assessment of technology problems, an understanding of the non-technical issues of commercialization, and a successful experience of leading the development of a product in a time-critical environment