The Creation and Evaluation of an Engineering Student Leadership Academy

This article describes the creation and evaluation designed to support student success through their inclusion in a variety of professional and technical training programs. The opportunity to develop a leadership academy specifically for engineering students allowed faculty program coordinators to deliver content that was normally not available to students at this Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI). We implemented and evaluated the leadership academy using a mixed-methods approach involving multimedia interviews and two traditional survey data collection techniques. Traditional online surveys gave quick feedback to coordinators on what the students found valuable, with the biggest change in programming being the spreading out of the Engineering Student Leadership Academy (ESLA) from two days to four half-days over the course of a month. Assessing the change in students' perception of leadership skills proved harder to measure in the short term. Using videoed interviews shortly after the delivery of the program had additional quality improvements, including the opportunity to showcase Hispanics, particularly Latinas, in leadership roles in the field of engineering. Reflections on improving the assessment and evaluation components are included in the article.