Public Speaking, Leadership, and Engineering

Abstract

When considering the skills of an engineer, one might say that he/she must have sharp technical skillsbe good in math and science. Others might say that an engineer should be able to problem solve effectively. While both of these views are correct, they are also, as of more recently, incomplete. With the changing of modern business practices, employers are saying that their engineers must also benow more than everconfident public speakers and leaders. The widespread change in employers' views resonated deeply into the engineering education community, even shaping the criteria for ABET accreditation. Following these changes, engineering universities have experimented with developing the public speaking and leadership skills of their students in a variety of wayssome successful, while others not as fruitful. Although well-intentioned, many of these experiments get implemented without a thorough evaluation on their helpfulness to students. Until the approaches of these skills are formally assessed, universities will not fully understand the consequences of their curriculum. This student poster presentation will present the results of a study on the impact of proving public speaking opportunities in the engineering curriculum. The presentation will summarize the roadblocks to improving student skills and possible solutions to these roadblocks.