ENE 69500: – Leadership, Policy, and Change in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Education (3 Credit Hours)

Course Type: School of Engineering Education Core
Course Description: This course will be framed around a historical and current perspective of STEM policy across various educational domains (e.g., secondary and postsecondary), political organizations (state, national, and international governments), and across different groups of people (e.g., students, teachers, and policymakers) and will examine the relationships among education policy, leadership theories, models of systemic change and STEM constituents and organizations. The class involves a combination of lecture, experiential exercises, discussion, in-class presentations, videos, individual assignments, and team assignments. At the end of the course, students will have opportunities to complete projects and/or produce deliverables (e.g., research proposals) that explore ways that they might add to the scholarship of STEM education policy and influence leadership, policy, and organizational change as it relates to STEM education topics of their choosing.

ENE 69500: – Harnessing Engineering Expertise (Co-taught with Dr. Rick Zadoks) (Variable (1-3 Credit Hours))

Course Type: School of Engineering Education Specialization
Course Description: Students enrolled in this course will engage in directed readings into the general topics of “engineering judgment” – the state of knowledge that comes after data and standard work (i.e., a third level of knowledge) – and the development of engineering expertise in industrial environments. This problem has been identified during conversations with members of ENE’s Industrial Advisory Council (IAC) about ways that ENE researchers can partner with industry to address problems of interest within industrial environments. Sample subtopics related to this idea of engineering judgment or expertise might include the following:

• Ways to develop new industry workers into experts in their areas
• Ways to capture current technical knowledge in industrial environments and to transfer this knowledge efficiently and effectively (teacher’s perspective)
• Ways to present the captured knowledge that leverage the preferred learning methodologies for the “experts to be” (learner’s perspective)
• Effective practices for addressing a problem of “brain drain” in industrial environments
• Explorations of levels and/or a taxonomy of engineering knowledge in industry

The purpose of this course is to operationalize expertise in industry, to develop methods to identify this expertise, to identify ways to capture expertise, and to present this operationalization of expertise to those who have not yet achieved it on their own in such a way that they embrace this expert knowledge and utilize it as effectively as the original experts. By the end of the course, students will use information from the technical literature to support their definitions of engineering expertise in industry and will propose methods to develop new experts so that these new experts do not have to go through the same process as the original experts (i.e., they should do things faster and better without having to repeat the unrepeatable experiences of the experts).

ENGR 19500: – Planning for Engineering Leadership Development (1 Credit Hour)

Course Type: Engineering Leadership Minor Core
Course Description: This course provides an introduction to engineering leadership. Traditional leadership concepts will be translated to engineering contexts so that students can engage in practical applications of leadership while at Purdue. Particular focus will be made upon ways that students can align their technical interests with leadership. The class involves a combination of lecture, experiential exercises, discussion, in-class presentations, videos, individual assignments, and team assignments. At the end of the course, students will have opportunities to complete develop a professional development plan that will guide them in their quests to become technical leaders.

ENGR 195 – E-Portfolio: Experiential Engineering Leadership (2 Credit Hours)

Course Type: Engineering Leadership Minor Core
Course Description: This course applies students’ knowledge of engineering leadership to a variety of electronic platforms (e.g., the Web, Twitter, and Facebook). Traditional leadership concepts will be translated to engineering contexts so that students can engage in practical applications of leadership while at Purdue. Particular focus will be made upon ways that students can align their technical interests with leadership. The class involves one hour of traditional classroom instruction and a one-hour of laboratory instruction. Both will include a combination of lecture, experiential exercises, discussion, in-class presentations, videos, individual assignments, and team assignments. At the end of the course, students will create an engineering leadership portfolio and a social media presence representing their engineering leadership perspectives.