Analyzing the Existing Undergraduate Engineering Leadership Skills Dr. Hamed M. Almalki (halmalki@Knights.ucf.edu) Dr. Luis Rabelo (Luis.Rabelo@ucf.edu) Charles Davis (cdavis73@valenciacollege.edu) Hammad Usmani (hammad@knights.ucf.edu) Industrial Engineering & Management Systems, University of Central Florida 4000 Central Florida Blvd, Orlando, FL 32816 Dr. Debra Hollister (dhollister@valenciacollege.edu) Psychology Department, Valencia College 1800 South Kirkman Road, Orlando, FL 32811 (alsavasquez@yahoo.com) Universidad de la Sabana Puente Del Comun, Chía, Cundinamarca, Colombia ABSTRACT Purpose: Studying and analyzing the undergraduate engineering students’ leadership skills to discover their potential leadership strengths and weaknesses. This study will unveil potential ways to enhance the ways we teach engineering leadership. The research has great insights that might assist engineering programs to improve curricula for the purpose of better engineering preparation to meet industry’s demands. Methodology & Findings: 441 undergraduate engineering students have been surveyed in two undergraduate engineering programs to discover their leadership skills. The results in both programs were revealing that undergraduate engineering students are lacking behind in the visionary leadership skills compared to directing, including and cultivating leadership styles. Recommendation: A practical framework has been proposed to enhance the lacking leadership skills by utilizing the Matrix of Change (MOC), and the Balanced Scorecard BSC) to capture the best leadership scenarios to design virtual simulation environment as per the lacking leadership skills which is the visionary leadership skills in this case. After that, the virtual simulation will be used to provide an experiential learning by replacing human beings with avatars that can be managed or dramatized by real people to enable the creation of live, practical, measurable, and customizable leadership development programs. Keywords: Engineering Program, Engineering Leadership Development, Simulation, Framework, Matrix of Change, Balanced Scorecard 1. INTRODUCTION Due to the important of engineering leadership development, any engineer usually will be hired for her or his technical skills, promoted for leadership and management skills and fired with poor communication skills [1]. Engineering leadership is defined as “the ability to lead a group of engineers and technical personnel responsible for creating, designing, developing, implementing, and evaluating products, systems, or services” [2]. The Bernard M. Gordon MIT Leadership Program has developed a white paper summarizing a few of the current undergraduate programs in engineering leadership worldwide, and describing some best practices based on the success of those programs. They define leadership programs as those that develop all or a portion of the following general skill set [14]. • Initiative and decision-making • Systems thinking • Networking and relationship building • Creating a compelling vision • Teambuilding and management to completion • Problem solving and critical inquiry. When it comes to the definition of engineering leadership in job description, it can be said “when companies use the word leadership in a job description for full-time entry-level engineering positions, they have a primary goal to seek individuals with strong communication, teamwork, and interpersonal interaction skills” [3]. The development and coexistence of technical and leadership skills should be forefront in the training of engineering students. The interdependency of technical and socioeconomic problem solving has increased the need for engineers to also prioritize the development of their “soft or professional skills [12]. The ISSN: 1690-4524 SYSTEMICS, CYBERNETICS AND INFORMATICS VOLUME 14 - NUMBER 6 - YEAR 2016 35 Dr. Alfonso Sarmiento