Software Engineering Leadership: A Student Initiative to Promote Change Agents in Industry

Most academic programs in software engineering teach the topic of leadership through lectures intertwined across the curriculum or through project components where students are expected to lead various team efforts. Unfortunately teaching leadership in such a way does not seem to provide the right amount of practical skills and abilities to allow students to assume leadership positions in industry after graduation. A student led, faculty backed leadership initiative at Carnegie Mellon's Master of Software Engineering Program (MSE) was created to overcome these challenges by providing the environment, the opportunity and the challenges that will in turn challenge students to acquire the necessary skills. This paper is a reflection on this initiative and its usefulness for students, faculty and industry alike.