Leadership and decision-making in Engineering Education

Abstract

This paper reports the current experience in teaching/learning leadership and decision-making processes in engineering education curricula, particularly in what concerns the subject of Operations Research in the Civil Engineering degree, at the Faculty of Engineering Porto University (Portugal). The recent curricular revision has generated many integration meetings among the responsible professors in the main curricular areas in civil engineering education, which has engendered a strong and harmonious body of teaching/learning and research that embodied the strategic planning and management processes. These were internalized by the whole community (teachers, pupils, researchers, and administrative staff). In this environment, the Operations Research has appeared as a new concept of curricular matter, where the evaluation processes are continuous, the individual and group capabilities are enhanced, and leadership and decision- making processes are implemented everyday. They are applied to the resolution of many concrete cases, taken from national and international firms and organizations, reporting troublesome facts they face in their current labor and productive practices. The results now begin to appear through a new generation of civil engineers that are right now entering the labor market, who are more attentive to the many different factors that interfere in decision-making, and who better faces the problems, quickly gather the required data, and take decisions that increasingly approach the optimal decisions