Engineers Learn “Soft Skills the Hard Way”: Planting a Seed of Leadership in Engineering Classes

We have combined professional practice experience of over thirty years, and have realized that engineers generally focus on technical details and often overlook the broader picture. However, today’s engineers are asked to do a lot more than just apply the scientific knowledge to solve practical problems. In a survey conducted by EE Times (Bellinger 2002), 77 percent of the engineers reported they have acted as team leaders and 83 percent have written reports for internal use. Currently, engineers hone their leadership and management skills while at work (i.e., learning “soft skills the hard way”). Traditional engineering classes prepare undergraduate and graduate students to master their technical skills in a specific engineering field without much time allotted for discussion and for leadership practice. Bellinger (2002) reported that engineering curriculums at many universities are so demanding technically that students don’t have the time or inclination to pursue business courses.

Engineering curriculums all over the United States are under pressure to maintain a specific number of graduating hours, leaving little or no room to add new courses. Therefore, to obtain soft skills, either the students should take additional courses (something they are not apt to do because of the time and money commitments), or the existing engineering curricula need to be modified to prepare the engineers for twenty-first century demands. Preparing engineering students to have sound technical skills is no doubt the primary responsibility of an engineering curriculum. However, in today’s competitive global market and changing work environment, which demand that engineers must be able to understand the project goals and accomplish them with the available resources, engineering programs are challenged to come up with innovative ways to teach classes so that the graduates are prepared to take over the challenges facing twenty-first century engineers, and to make these programs consistent with ABET requirements. The National Academy of Engineers (NAE 2004) emphasizes that to maintain the nation’s economic competitiveness and improve the quality of life for people around the world, engineering educators and curriculum developers must anticipate dramatic changes in engineering practice and adapt their programs accordingly. Arciszewski (2006) considered the lack of engineering leadership in civil engineering as a crisis and urged civil engineers to use the present challenges to change the profession to meet the new demands.

Almost every engineering program in the Unites States has a capstone design course that is designed, as the name suggests, to “capsulize” what students have learned in other classes. Unless the course is designed and taught to accomplish its real objectives, it gives a false sense of completeness. Often the instructors of this course have little or no project management experience in professional practice. As a result, graduates lack the education and experience to learn the basics of project management and leadership. Moreover, a broader concern is whether it is fair to believe just one course to be a panacea.

Let’s take a careful look at ABET’s Engineering Criteria 2000 (1998, points “d” through “j”) and compare them to the most common dimensions of an engineering leader.Following are the most common dimensions of an engineering leader. These are not listed in order of importance, but rather as an attempt to map them against ABET’s aforementioned criteria.Careful review of this information suggests that ABET has placed significant emphasis on preparing engineering students as leaders. Keeping in mind the limitation on adding new courses in an engineering curriculum and to avoid dependence on only the capstone design course, it is obvious that the only choice is to modify the existing courses such that a healthy seed of leadership is planted during engineering education—one able to produce successful leaders with appropriate nourishment to strengthen the roots during professional practice.

Traditionally, engineering courses have been taught in a straightforward way, starting with a lot of definitions, basic concepts, and methods for solving well-defined problems, which in most cases are simplified and idealized (Sallfors and Sallfors 2000). In most of the basic civil engineering courses, the instructors provide just the necessary parameters to solve an idealized problem that includes a step-by-step procedure to efficiently solve the problem. On one hand this is necessary to teach the students basic principles and formulas needed to make judgments. On the other hand, this way of teaching is not sufficient to produce engineering leaders (Kumar 2004).

Graham states that “if someone asks me how to get from my office here in the university to a consultant’s office in downtown, I can do two things: I can tell him to get to University Crescent, turn right on Bishop Grandin Boulevard, then north of St. Mary’s Street, etc. That is, I can teach him the path to follow. Alternatively, I can show him on a map where the consultant’s office is located relative to the university and let him pick his own way” [cited in Couttolenc (2000)].

Problem-based learning (PBL) has been used successfully by other educators, particularly medical educators, to train medical care providers. However, use of PBL in engineering education can best be regarded as at infancy. PBL is a training method that challenges students to “think and learn” by solving real-world problems while working in groups and learning from each other. Most of the components of ABET Engineering Criteria 2000 could be satisfied by teaching engineering classes, particularly engineering design classes, by using the PBL approach. Fig. 1 shows how PBL compares with more traditional instruction (IMSA 2004). Table 1 also shows the difference between PBL instruction and traditional lecture-based instruction.

It is a proven fact that students learn best when they receive education complemented with experiments or hands-on training. Traditionally, pedagogies based on hands-on training include at least one or a combination of laboratory experiments, undergraduate research experiences, PBL, internships, and cooperative experiences. Instructors can also use field trips to provide practical applications to engineering education. This approach to engineering education has helped students tremendously; however, it still does not help students develop soft skills and sufficient confidence to independently execute even a small project. Another pedagogy that comes closer to inculcating soft skills along with required technical competence in students is service learning, which is “a pedagogy or educational methodology that directly and intentionally integrates classroom learning with service to the community” (Lima and Oakes 2006). As Tsang (2000) states, “[A]lthough service learning has received relatively little attention in the engineering disciplines, it has been well established in the social sciences, and in disciplines in which clinical experiences represent an important part of the learning process.”

Service learning involves integration of several components and partnership among several players, such as the community, practicing firms, students, and faculty. It is important to understand that “students performing service learning are not doing something for the community, but rather with the community” (Lima and Oakes 2006). Service-learning pedagogy provides students an opportunity to work on real-world projects that will be built based on their design, as opposed to working on real-world situations, which can provide good experience but are not ways to develop confidence and soft skills. Ample literature is available to understand service learning in engineering.

A number of universities now set up engineering courses where team leadership skills, writing, oral presentations, and resolution of problems are part of obtaining an engineering degree (Bellinger 2002). According to NAE (2005), curricular approaches that engage students in team exercises, team design courses, and in courses that connect engineering design and solutions to real-world problems so that the social relevance of engineering is apparent appear to be successful in retaining engineering. We joined academia at Southern Illinois University Carbondale (SIUC), and based on our extensive professional experience we modified several courses, developed new courses, and modified the instruction of courses we teach to be in line with the recommendations of NAE (2005) and to incorporate the PBL curriculum and service-learning pedagogy in engineering to a certain extent. Brief information about one of the courses, “Geotechnical Engineering in Professional Practice,” developed and taught at SIUC, is discussed below.

The purpose of this course is to provide understanding of the concepts of geotechnical engineering in professional practice and to develop engineering leadership skills in the undergraduate and graduate students planning to pursue careers in geotechnical engineering or any other field of civil engineering. The course objectives include applying the principles of geotechnical engineering effectively in a real-world setting; planning, managing, and successfully executing geotechnical projects; interpreting and using the recommendations developed by geotechnical engineers; incorporating total quality management (TQM); applying professional liability, risk management, and loss prevention principles to geotechnical projects; training students to work effectively and efficiently as members of an interdisciplinary team; and satisfying the needs of internal and external clients.

The class is divided into groups of three to four students. At any one time, each group works on the same project. The projects selected are real-world projects that are going to be built in the near future or were recently built. Technical complexity of the projects selected is similar to the projects on which engineers are likely to work within the first two to three years of their professional career. In addition, projects are selected such that the students practice leadership and management skills, ethics, and interactions with consulting engineers and community members. In order to enhance their communication skills, students write detailed proposals and project reports similar to those written by practicing engineers. After completion of their own reports, the students are given the opportunity to review the full original reports of the project prepared by consulting engineering firms and compare their work with the work performed by registered professional engineers. In addition to the real-world projects, students also work on carefully selected individual assignments to enhance their technical skills.

During the first few weeks of the course, the instructor coaches the students about intricate details of proposal and report writing, available resources, and technical standards and specifications. During the remainder of the semester, the instructor serves as a resource bank. Students decide what information is needed and the instructor coaches them on how and where to get the information. Whenever needed, the class sessions include technical discussions on developing design data. Balanced emphasis is placed on developing soft skills and technical competence. Depending on the size and complexity of the projects, students work on two to four projects during a semester. After completion of each project, the instructor reorganizes the teams and a new project is assigned.

Student performance assessment and grade assignments are very challenging for this type of instruction. Individual assignments are generally easy to assess. However, assessment and grading of group proposals and projects presents more of a challenge. The course instructor critically evaluates each group’s proposals and projects and assigns a particular score to each group’s product. Each member of the group also evaluates his/her team members based on their contribution to the assignments, leadership shown, work ethics, etc. Each group’s group assignment score is then distributed to the individual team members based on the evaluation by his or her team members. The overall grade is then calculated based on the points each student receives in his or her individual and group assignments.

The student feedback of the course has been extremely positive, and some of the unsolicited comments from SIUC alumni who have taken this course include: “eight interviews, eight offers of employment”; and “I attribute half of the success I have had to the class I took from you, ‘Geotechnical Engineering in Professional Practice.’” In the past several years, students at SIUC have ranked us as the top teachers in the college of engineering, which is attributed to the changes that we have made in teaching the courses we teach. Unfortunately courses similar to the ones we have discussed are very limited and not all graduates take them. Therefore, a much broader change in the engineering education is needed. NAE (2005) emphasizes that “the iterative process of designing, predicting performance, buildings, and testing…should be taught from the earliest stages of the curriculum, including the first year.”

We are convinced that implementation of the PBL curriculum and service-learning pedagogy in engineering is the most effective way to prepare engineers for the twenty-first century. Although modifying a handful of courses by a few instructors could enhance student learning drastically, the real change to the curriculum is challenging primarily because it requires a lot of commitment and dedication from everybody involved. The implementation also demands that the faculty members modify their teaching style, which is not always easy. In addition, it requires administration to understand what it takes to accomplish this so that resources can be directed appropriately and the team players can be rewarded fairly. NAE (2005) recommendations clearly state, “The engineering education establishment…should endorse research in engineering education as a valued and rewarded activity for engineering faculty as a means to enhance and personalize the connection to undergraduate students, to understand how they learn, and to appreciate the pedagogical approaches that excite them.”