Despite an elusive definition of engineering leadership, educators and researchers forge ahead to identify disparate and complementary theories which frame engineering leadership.

The Madison Engineering Leadership Development program seeks to enhance the technical mastery required in engineering by blending it with the value-added skills of building character, understanding core values, working in/leading teams, relationship management and inspiring others.

The goal of the Bernard and Sophia Gordon Engineering Leadership Center (the Gordon Center) at University of California San Diego is to develop effective engineering leaders. While anyone can lead, not all aspire to or master the skills required for effective leadership.

The concluding article of this engineering leadership (EL) development sourcebook looks to the future of the field by exploring four key purposes of EL education: the pursuit of knowledge, personal growth, professional preparation and social transformation.

Teamwork is an integral part of leadership, and many teamwork skills are also leadership skills. This chapter explains how instructors can help engineering students build their capacity for leadership while working in teams.

When it comes to engineering leadership program development, having a well-formulated plan with clear goals and objectives is paramount. Consider your programs to be works-in-progress and be prepared for potential challenges.

This article highlights the current state of "what we know we do not know" about student leadership development and suggests specific research agendas and program assessment methods. This article includes the practical description of how rigorous methods could be used to address these issues using examples for both researchers and…

The purpose of this article is to identify proper uses for mixed methods in leadership research and assessment. This article will highlight research and assessment questions that are best served by mixed methods and will offer practitioner-friendly guides and examples for integrating quantitative and qualitative data to help eat the whole whale…

This article discusses how the design of research should follow the questions the study seeks to address. The article provides practical and diverse examples of broad research questions applicable to researchers or program architects and summarizes how different methods should be employed to respond.

This article explores who is participating in leadership learning initiatives in higher education and how they are represented in research, assessment, and evaluation. The article is useful to leadership educators because it explores who is conducting leadership research, assessment, evaluation, and scholarship (i.e., positionality)--and how these…

In this article, the author summarizes what critical and transformational theory is, along with its goals, and describes why such an approach is particularly relevant within the field of student leadership development. Application of a critical and transformational approach to conducting research and program evaluation efforts in leadership and…

This article makes a case for longitudinal and non-linear methods when researching or evaluating student leadership development. After a primer on longitudinal methodology, barriers and aligned solutions to methodological challenges are presented.

This article serves as an overview of qualitative inquiry for leadership development practitioner-scholars both new and experienced. It begins with a discussion of the need for the qualitative inquiry to create knowledge about leadership development. Then, it overviews design components and includes examples of both research and assessment. We…

This article will explore aspects of research, assessment, and program evaluation. The qualities of good practice related to each of these share many similarities and differences. The authors propose a framework for consistently evaluating the application of various ways of studying and improving leadership learning on both the local and global…

This article discusses considerations and methodologies for leadership educators to assess leadership development in groups and organizations using groups as the unit of analysis rather than aggregating individual scores.