< Graduates

This course is taught during the winter semester and topics covered are divided into four groups: 1) management of self, 2) management of others, 3) management of projects, and 4) principles of leadership. The topics covered are diversity at work, building effective teams, effective performance coaching, evaluation, delegation, utilization, producers and managers, establishing a vision and alignment of purpose, communication skills, managing conflict, developing a contract fee, developing project scopes, engineering projects-from beginning to end, project management approaches, engineering liability, risk management, Microsoft project, critical path, scheduling, partnering, goal setting, professional licensure, public speaking, information sharing, being persuasive, negotiations, family leadership, situational leadership, and the four disciplines of execution (a Franklin Covey program lecture). Students also learn cultural differences that can affect team work.
 
Students in this course use the project for which they have previously developed an RFP as the design project for an undergraduate team enrolled in the department’s culminating design class. Graduate Students help their respective undergraduate teams develop appropriate scope, deliverables, tasks, timeline, and milestones for the project. The students serve as mentors of the multi-disciplinary undergraduate project design team. They help the team manage the project to completion on time, on budget, and to the client’s satisfaction; and supervise the preparation and delivery of a design project report. Each undergraduate team has three students and a scheduled weekly project meeting. Graduate students are strongly encouraged to attend their teams’ weekly project meetings and to coordinate the activities of the team. Graduate students are encouraged to help but not do the actual work; they are to function as a resource rather than a working hand. They “exist” to facilitate the working of the team and build a cohesive team. Graduate students are encouraged to check the progress of the work and provide encouragement and direction when such are needed. This setup provides hands on experience for the graduate students and an opportunity for the undergraduate students to participate in an actual rather than a contrived design project.