About the Leadership Program

Overview

The college of engineering leadership program promotes broad and deep leadership skills across four domains: Forming a Leader Ethic as the foundation of leadership, Self awareness and mastery, Team awareness and relationships, and Project awareness and leadership context. Learning depth follows three levels (after Costa's Taxonomy):  1. Gathering, 2. Processing, & 3. Applying. Engineering faculty and industry partners created the program content which has been adapted from existing literature or by industry case studies. These materials are distributed to students through existing courses and proposed co-curricular seminars. The leadership program teaches students to apply knowledge, skills, and attitudes in each of the four domains of leadership and assess their levels of achievement. 

Teaching & Assessing Leadership

Students in the program learn leadership lessons through three learning levels.  The learning activities at each level include:

• Gather – Guiding students to information about each domain and instructing them in the vocabulary of leadership.  Here they are taught to reflect and assess their own initial knowledge, skills, and attitudes about leadership.
• Process – Processing involves comparing and contrasting leadership ethics, and the strengths and weaknesses in themselves and others.  Students also gain an understanding of their preferred team roles, the preferred team roles of others, and how to describe a leader’s ethical choices.
• Apply – Applying lessons by developing action plans for ethical self-mastery and relationship management while creating personal and team visions considering situational constraints.  They are mentored by their peers and instructors and are provided feedback so can adjust their approach.

Acknowledgments

The leadership program began in Fall 2016 under the guidance of the Dean’s Leadership Board and with financial support form the Al-Khatib Family Foundation, Northrop Grumman Corporation, SoCal Gas, Brian Jaramillo, Darcel L. Hulse and many others who support leadership development in engineering. Engineering students obtain strong leadership experience and training by participating in campus clubs, competitions, and projects, however, the college would like to improve upon that number to better ensure that every student is prepared to excel in the workforce upon graduation.  If you are interested in supporting the Cal Poly Pomona College of Engineering Leadership program, please contact us at egrlead@cpp.edu.