CEM Faculty: A Leading Opportunity for the Civil Engineering Profession

The purpose of this paper is to highlight an opportunity available to Construction Engineering and Management (CEM) faculty to facilitate leadership into Civil Engineering (CE) undergraduate education. Matriculating students today are not prepared to deal with the interpersonal issues attendant to addressing and solving today's CE activities, particularly assuming positions of leadership. A unique opportunity to rectify the lack of formal leadership preparation has been created by the change in the accreditation process. The shift from prescriptive criteria (doing what is specified) to outcomes (accomplishing goals and targets) via the new Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) accreditation criteria is viewed as a major step toward enabling education change, reform, and innovation. This paper describes "what" constitutes leadership, "why" CEM faculty members are positioned to lead in this effort, and "how" leadership can be taught and modeled. If CEM faculty members fail to proactively integrate leadership principles into the curriculum, we abandon our responsibility to the profession and squander the opportunity to fully develop the intellectual assets of the future—the students—entrusted to us.