Preparing Engineering Leaders for the Intersection of Technology, Policy, and Society

As engineering graduates increasingly assume leadership roles in technology-driven organizations, their education must evolve beyond technical excellence to encompass business acumen, organizational leadership, and intercultural competence. This mixed-methods study examines an innovative pedagogical approach integrating socio-technical awareness and stakeholder management into engineering education through problem-based learning. Through a semester-long intervention with 43 participants, we investigated how restructured learning environments prepare engineering students for leadership roles in diverse, global contexts. Quantitative analysis revealed significant improvements in students' ability to identify business implications and stakeholder concerns, with notable gains in intercultural awareness among majority students. Qualitative analysis of student journals and interviews from 38 participants revealed three themes essential for future technical leaders: evolving professional identity, comfort with organizational ambiguity, and cross-cultural stakeholder engagement. Teams with diverse composition demonstrated higher performance in solution viability and business impact assessment, while structured cross-cultural exchanges improved cultural humility across all participants. Students from diverse backgrounds showed superior initial stakeholder awareness compared to their peers, their perspectives enhancing majority students' understanding of global markets and inclusive decision-making. The integration of modern business tools, including AI-aided stakeholder mapping, provided insights into technology management in multicultural contexts. Through careful scaffolding of learning experiences and intentional reflection activities, students developed both technical competence and leadership capabilities simultaneously. The study also revealed important considerations for scaling these approaches, particularly regarding faculty development and institutional support structures. Our findings demonstrate that embedding business principles and intercultural experiences in engineering education through structured reflection better prepares students for executive roles in global organizations. These results contribute to ongoing discussions about engineering education reform while emphasizing the critical need for institutional support in developing the next generation of engineering leaders who can effectively navigate the intersections of technology, business, and diverse societal needs.