Implementation of Leadership and Service Learning in a First-Year Engineering Course Enhances Professional Skills*

Successful engineering students should possess competence in both technical and professional traits such as creativity and leadership. This paper investigates how an engineering service learning module with a focus on leadership can affect engineering students’ confidence level for technical and professional traits. This leadership module was offered as part of our first-year course that aims to expose freshmen to general engineering principles. The research question in this paper addresseswhat is the effect, if any, of an engineering service learningmodule on (1) the confidence levels ofwomen andmen as it relates to elevenNationalAcademyofEngineering (NAE) andABETengineering traits and (2) their confidence in and perceptions of leadership. Data were collected via two surveys administered at the beginning and end of the module. One hundred and thirteen students returned both NAE-ABET surveys and fifty-two returned both leadership surveys. A twotailed Student’s t-test with equal variance was utilized with a confidence level of both 95% and 90% to test for statistical significance. The results showed leadership module students increased in confidence in all NAE-ABET and leadership skills, while students not in themodule increased less or decreased in confidence inmostNAE-ABET skills.Women in our leadership module increased their confidence on all NAE-ABET skills, while other women experienced no significant increase in confidence level.Within the leadershipmodule,women’s confidence increasedmore thanmen’s confidence in all but four NAE-ABET traits. The statistical trends of students’ survey responses and qualitative analysis of the comments show no negative impact on their confidence in technical and professional skills when compared with students in the more technical modules. Moreover, qualitative responses from women indicate overwhelming appreciation for the experience and skills gained from the leadership module, as well as increased confidence for women as engineers.