Leadership From Day One: Integrating Leadership Development across a Four-Year Experiential Engineering Education Program

Program Type: General Interest Session

Professional Competencies: Leadership, Student Learning and Development

Target Groups: Mid-level Student Affairs Professionals, Senior-Level Student Affairs Professional

Institution Types: Large Universities, Mid-Size Colleges & Universities

Certification Domains: Student Learning, Development, and Success, Leadership

Abstract

Cornell Engineering’s Student Project Teams (SPTs) provide an outstanding opportunity for experiential learning as multi-disciplinary teams work on complex problems. Nearly 1,500 students are engaged in the program, working together to hone leadership, technical, and professional skills alongside teammates from across the university. This program is unique in the way it integrates leadership and technical development with the academic curriculum; real-world lessons learned through hands-on project work are solidified through critical reflection and acknowledged with course credit.

Presenters will share relevant highlights of the current program structure, review how David Kolb’s Experiential Learning Theory has served as the conceptual foundation for the development of the new SPT academic framework, and guide participants through detailed examples from three sequenced courses to illustrate how multi-year leadership development is embedded throughout the program, using the topic of conflict management as an example.

Presenters

• Lauren Stulgis
  Swanson Director of Student Project Teams
  Cornell University
• Kate Reiter
  Assistant Director - Student Project Teams, Cornell University