Student Leadership Institute - Challenging Students to Solve Real World Problems
Nancy J. Schneider, Gary W. Fischer · 2025
The University of Iowa's College of Engineering, in collaboration with one of its most distinguished alumni, has developed an engaging Student Leadership Institute for a diverse mix of our high potential undergraduate students.The central focus of the institute is to help students develop greater self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and relationship management (closely aligned with Daniel Goleman's competencies of leadership).Students experience both self-awareness and social awareness through development exercises and through participation in group problem solving exercises.Guest Leaders share multi-faceted case studies from personal experience and challenge the student groups to determine how they would resolve the case study problems.After each event, students fill out a survey to provide feedback that is used to make continual improvements to the institute experience.The success of the institute is perhaps best summarized by one of the student's comments, "I learned that leadership is something more than just leading.It's also encouraging others to reach their full potential."