Building Engineering Leaders
It is in MIT’s rich, innovative, and inventive tradition of engineering leadership that the Bernard M. Gordon-MIT Engineering Leadership Program (ELP) operates.
Housed in MIT’s School of Engineering, the Program provides an integrated set of leadership-oriented, discipline-building, hands-on engineering activities, set in the context of the practice of engineering, designed to develop outstanding MIT students as disciplined, future leaders in the world of engineering practice.
A selective program for MIT engineering students, the Gordon-MIT Engineering Leadership Program provides a major, national model for the development of next-generation technical leaders (not necessarily entrepreneurs) who are equipped to understand and address significant engineering problems in real-world situations.
For a competitively chosen group of Gordon Engineering Leaders, the Program is an intensely personalized leadership development program featuring a high degree of interaction with industry leaders, faculty and fellow students. For other MIT engineering Juniors and Seniors committed to honing their engineering leadership skills, the Engineering Leadership Practice Opportunities Program (ELPOP) also offers authentic and unparalleled leadership experiences.
The Program:
- Educates and develops the character of outstanding MIT students as potential future leaders in the world of engineering practice and development
- Transforms engineering leadership in the nation, thereby significantly increasing its product development capability
Through project-based learning, extensive interaction with industry leaders (including the Program's unique InternshipPlus opportunities), hands-on product development, engineering leadership labs, and authentic leadership challenges and exercises, the Program transforms a highly motivated group of undergraduate students into engineering leaders who will fuel America's technology engine.
"What’s important in engineering education? Making universities and engineering schools exciting, creative, adventurous, rigorous, demanding and empowering environments is more important than specifying curricular details.
"The Gordon-MIT Engineering Leadership Program is an example of how MIT is working to empower today's engineering undergraduates with critical leadership skills that will help them to become tomorrow's engineering leaders."
— Dr. Charles Vest, President, National Academy of Engineering and former President, MIT
Launched through a $20 million gift by the Gordon Foundation — the largest gift made to MIT's School of Engineering for curriculum development — the Program aims to create new approaches to prepare students for engineering leadership and to ensure MIT continues to lead the nation in developing effective engineering leaders.
A core goal of the program is a set of improvements to education at MIT for all engineering students, with a laser-like focus on product development and project engineering.
"To me, the Gordon-MIT Engineering Leadership Program rediscovers MIT's culture of Mens et Manus. It builds on the momentum of many fine departmental educational efforts as well as on the broad support among MIT leadership and faculty for contextualizing learning. The Program represents the kind of educational innovation for which MIT has become renowned, and is on a scale that few other peer schools can embark on."
— Tom Kochan, George M. Bunker Professor of Management, MIT
The goals of the program are:
- To give all MIT engineering students hands-on visceral experience in project-based learning and results-oriented leadership as part of their normal academic experience.
- To prepare many (ELPOP) MIT engineering students to be more effective contributors to engineering invention, innovation and implementation efforts through advanced courses and multidisciplinary projects.
- A focused program to educate and prepare a few (Gordon Engineering Leaders) MIT engineering students to be future leaders of engineering invention, innovation and implementation efforts.
- To increase the focus of national engineering education on the development of leaders of engineering invention, innovation and implementation (EIII).
The Program provides services for students, resources for faculty and opportunities for industry — to support, sustain, promote and enrich MIT's efforts to develop engineering leaders.
"In the past those engineers who mastered the principles of business and management were rewarded with leadership roles. This will be no different in the future. However, with the growing interdependence between technology and the economic and social foundations of modern society, there will be an increasing number of opportunities for engineers to exercise their potential as leaders, not only in business but also in the nonprofit and government sectors.
"In preparation for this opportunity, engineers must understand the principles of leadership and be able to practice them in growing proportions as their careers advance.
"Complementary to the necessity for strong leadership ability is the need to also possess a working framework upon which high ethical standards and a strong sense of professionalism can be developed."
— National Academy of Engineering. The Engineer of 2020: Visions of Engineering in the New Century. Washington, D.C.: The National Academies Press, 2004.
