Engineering Leadership Program

The Engineering Leadership Program (ENLP) has been a part of CU’s award-winning leadership community since 2012. Like our fellow leadership programs, we are committed to cultivating leaders who are capable of meeting today’s challenges and have the strength and character to improve the world of the future. 

 

ENLP differs, however, from our peer leadership programs in two key respects. 

 

First, our focus is on shaping engineering leaders who understand leadership in the context of science and technology. As the modern world becomes ever more dependent on complex technological systems, we need leaders who are technologically adept and who can also understand technology in larger social, legal, and political contexts. Our technologically driven economies give engineers a lot of power and influence; and it is important that they have the political, ethical, and philosophical awareness to use this influence effectively. 

 

Second, our approach to achieving these outcomes integrates the study of current trends in technology with traditional liberal education. We bring the worlds of applied science and high technology into conversation with philosophy, political theory, anthropology, history, and classical literature. This combination allows us to frame what is unique about our modern landscape in the light of the perennial questions and problems of the human situation.  

ENLP delivers its unique approach to leadership in four main classes while also offering ENLP Certificate credit for several approved electives. Each class is designed to tackle a specific dimension of leadership, but to also be complimentary to the other classes and build toward an integrated curricular vision. 

 

The core classes are: ENLP 2000: Leadership, Fame, and Failure; ENLP 3000: Intelligent Leadership; ENLP 3100: Complex Leadership Challenges; and ENLP 4000: The Empire of Modern Science. 

Any student in the College of Engineering and Applied Science can take our courses, but we do encourage those who are interested to sign up for our Certificate Program, which requires 12 credit hours (4 classes) of ENLP coursework, or 3 ENLP classes and 1 approved elective (see our website for more details). Having an ENLP Certificate on your transcript is a great way to signal to employers that you are serious about leadership and have taken steps to prepare yourself for its challenges. The ENLP Certificate is also a pathway to the Leadership Studies Minor; our students who’ve taken this route have profited enormously from their experience with LEAD 4000 as well as the bountiful resources provided by the Center for Leadership.  

 

For students who want to take their interest further, we offer the ENLP Fellowship, which focuses on a deep dive research project on some aspect of leadership in the context of applied science.  2023-24 was the debut year for our Fellowship and we just had a tremendous Colloquium where our Fellows presented their final projects. Congratulations to our debut cohort!  

 

Several ENLP students have been recognized for their accomplishments, including Percy Smith, who, while being part of our ENLP Fellowship Program, was a recipient of the CFL Student Leader Award, selected for the Chang Scholarship, chosen to speak with Chancellor de Stefano, and also invited to speak at Boulder’s Conference on World Affairs. ENLP sponsored Percy Smith and Jeff Kelly to attend a technology and ethics Summer Institute at Harvard in 2023, and since then, both have been helpful to us in shaping our thinking about responsible leadership in an age of technological acceleration. As members of historically underserved and special interest communities (LGBTQ and disabled veterans), Percy and Jeff have helped ENLP improve its sensitivity to these communities and our awareness of their diverse needs.

 

ENLP also works with alumni and industry leaders to expose our students to their experience and guidance. ENLP students have, for example, had conversations with Lucky Vidmar (Chief of Intellectual Property at Microsoft), Conor Rowan (former engineer at Boeing), and David Chang (entrepreneur and former Chair of Chemical Engineering at CU); and they participate in the programming of our network friends like the Rocky Mountain Artificial Intelligence Interest Group (RMAIIG) and Silicon Flatirons. One of our students, Hyma Jujuru, was recently chosen to sit on the board at RMAIIG, which is just one example of how ENLP integrates with our network partners. 

In sum, ENLP is proud to support CFL’s vision and to be one of its affiliates, in addition to supporting CU’s vibrant leadership community. We continue to refine our unique approach to leadership education, cultivating our curricular and co-curricular resources, and we look forward to serving our students as they prepare for tomorrow’s leadership challenges in technology, entrepreneurship, governance, and the applied sciences.