Leadership skills development among engineering students in Higher Education – an analysis of the Russell Group universities in the UK

Abstract

ABSTRACT Today, the engineering landscape is continually changing, and Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) have a responsibility to design curricula that address the growing demands of various industry sectors. Likewise, the roles and responsibilities of an engineer are evolving; requiring a further broadening of the current engineering curriculum. As a profession, engineering draws upon broad interdisciplinary knowledge, and when training twenty-first-century engineers, universities should follow a more comprehensive teaching and learning approach, with a focus on both technical and soft skills including the integration of leadership into engineering curricula. However, the spectrum of engineering leadership is not well-defined. Leadership is one of the most widely sought-after skills in the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) industries; it is, therefore, clear that more investigation needs to be carried out into this area of engineering pedagogy. One of the most distinct gaps in the literature is that there is little or no consensus on what approaches should be undertaken to integrate leadership in engineering courses by those in academia. This paper seeks to shed light on some of these gaps, with the primary objective of the evaluation of the current state of leadership education using a nation-wide sample of BEng 1 Electronic Engineering course structures and contents at Russell Group 2 universities in the UK. It highlights the case study of the University of York, where there is a strong emphasis on the integration of engineering leadership and management skills within the current BEng Electronic Engineering course structure.