Engineering Leadership

Engineers in the 21st century cannot solely have scientific knowledge and technical skills to solve problems. They should know how to lead projects and teams of people with diverse backgrounds. Engineers also bring new ideas to teams, influence others to drive innovations, provide guidance for less-experienced peers, and direct others for a positive outcome. All of these require effective communication, interpersonal skills, and inspirational techniques, which are important attributes of leaders. Prestigious universities like Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and University of California, Berkeley have professional programs for students to develop leadership. Following this trend, E2I has established the Professional Leader’s Focus corner – a resource area where students can find information about leadership d! evelopment:

  1. A mini-library including leadership books and renowned leader biographies
  2. Recommended articles about leadership and related issues
  3. Showcase introduction of leadership biographies of recognized leaders who are/have been engineers
  4. On-screen slideshows about leadership and service leadership


Newsletter “Leadership in Engineers” (LinE)

           
    Issue 1    Issue 2   


EnG Chitchat

This is an open and interactive forum open to all engineering students to share ideas on topics about leadership and engineers’ contribution to society. It is held at the Professional Leader’s Focus corner inside the Engineering Commons every Wednesday in the fall and spring semesters. In each session, speakers pose questions, and students are encouraged to share their ideas about the discussion topics. This makes students understand more about the importance of leadership skills in engineering disciplines and how engineering helps different people and communities.



Service Leadership Initiative (SLI)

This project focuses on the education and promotion of service leadership at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), and provides future engineers with opportunities for service leadership development. Service leadership development is essential for their future careers since Hong Kong, a cosmopolitan metropolis, has over 90% of the GDP from the service sector and engineers are professionals who provide technical and expert services to clients. The project is sponsored by the Victor and William Fung Foundation of the Fung Group and supported by the Hong Kong Institute of Service Leadership and Management Limited (HKI-SLAM). The strategy towards SLI at HKUST is that it should be a cultural environment where everyone in the university understands the need to serve, and more importantly, the service occurs naturally. This concept is being facilitated through the development of a Service Leadership Community (SLC) within HKUST.

The Community is aimed at constructing a sustainable framework to seed the mindset of service leadership in all students. Through the implementation of a peer mentoring program, service learning courses, knowledge-based courses and other supporting activities like newsletter promotions and workshop training, students can have a variety of exposure to service leadership as something they can experience in their everyday life.

  1. 2016 International Conference on Service Leadership Education in Service Economies – January 6-7, 2016
  2. 2014 International Conference on Service Leadership Education for University Students: Experience in Hong Kong – Review and download


Leadership/Service Leadership Courses

ENGG2900A - Community Service Project: The Way to Success

Merely having scientific knowledge and technical skills is not enough for engineers in the 21st century. Professional engineers should be equipped with leadership skills and be able to work with people from diverse backgrounds. This course aims to help students develop leadership skills and expand their horizons through involvement in service projects designed by themselves, with the support of experienced mentors. Unlike conventional lecture-based engineering courses, this course offers more interactive modules (e.g., experiential activities, simulation exercises, self-assessment, and team building).

  1. Open to students of three schools (School of Business and Management, School of Engineering, and School of Science) so that students with different backgrounds can learn and work together
  2. Having mentors from different industries (e.g., engineers, lawyers, accountants, bankers, company CEOs and directors, etc.) to hold group discussions and advise students on group service projects
  3. Offering more autonomy for students to learn and practice leadership through their group service projects
  4. Video Introduction


ENGG2900B - Community Service Project: Innovative Trolley Design for the Elderly

This course is intended to engage students in teams to design and develop an innovative trolley for the elderly. Students can gain experience from developing a plan, marketing through implementation of projects with a group of professional civil engineers. Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs) of this course are:

  1. Introduction to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and commonly service issues from a social point of view
  2. Introduction to mechanical, eletro-mechanical, production and costing aspects of trolley design, with the aim of helping elderly people collecting cardboard from the streets
  3. Integrate students' knowledge and technical skills into a comprehensive design project
  4. Involve students actively in the planning and design of a realistic engineering project
  5. Foster teamwork and multi-disciplinary coordination towards solving open-ended design problems
  6. Provide students with exposure to real-life engineering experiences via site visits and meetings with engineers from a prominent engineering company


ENGG2900C - Community Service Project: The Mobile App Development for Hearing Impaired Children

In this course, students from different schools (SBM, SENG, SHSS and SSCI) will learn how to design a mobile App and server system of Articulation Screening and Training Tool for hearing impaired children.

  1. Work in sub-team in different areas such as mobile app design, data server construction, system integration and UI design
  2. Organize service learning activities in collecting speech samples


ENGG2900D - Community Service Project: Underwater Robot Community Engagement Project

Besides the technical skills of building robots, students will learn to apply their knowledge to satisfy the needs of others in learning.

  1. Work in teams from different schools, to serve identified community groups (i.e. primary and secondary school students/South Asian youths etc.) and understand their limitations
  2. Learn how to apply theoretical knowledge on the building of under-water robots
  3. Act as teachers by transferring their skills of under-water robot building to primary and secondary school students and/or South Asian youths
  4. Learn the skills of event management throughout the project