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Session Description

Ticketed event: $15.00
We will conduct an immersive workshop that demonstrates hands-on methods of practicing and developing leadership skills in an engineering context as used in third- and fourth-year undergraduate laboratories taught at MIT. Attendees will experience the lab as "students," have an opportunity to discuss their experience, and then share ideas of how these types of activities might fit into their programs.

Speakers

1. Leo McGonagle

   Massachusetts Institute of Technology

   Colonel Leo McGonagle is the executive director of the Gordon Engineering Leadership Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This co-curricular, experiential program is designed to develop the leadership, teamwork, communications skills, and character of undergraduates within the MIT School of Engineering.
   McGonagle has been at MIT since 2005 and his passion is developing leaders. Before joining the Gordon Program in 2008, he spent a career in service as an officer in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. This included six years on college campuses, administering leader development programs, advising, coaching, and mentoring emerging-leader students.
   Among his key assignments in the Army were as department chair and Professor of Military Science of the Army ROTC Program at MIT, executive officer of a 600-soldier engineering construction battalion, and commander of a 100-soldier engineer company. In his assignment as department chair, he was responsible for the leadership development and commissioning of students from MIT, Harvard, Tufts, Salem State, Endicott, Gordon, and Wellesley College. He previously served for three years in a student leader and character-development role at the United States Military Academy at West Point.
   McGonagle earned his commission through the ROTC and was a Distinguished Military Graduate. He earned the Army Aviator Badge, is a parachutist and an Army Ranger, and has been awarded three Bronze Star Medals for service and leadership during combat operations. A graduate of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, he holds a M.S. in leadership development and counseling from Long Island University and a B.A. in psychology from Boston University.

2. Dr. Joel Schindall

   Massachusetts Institute of Technology

   Joel Schindall re-joined the MIT faculty in June of 2002 after a 35-year career in the defense, aerospace, and telecommunications industries. His research includes the invention and development of a nanotube-enhanced ultracapacitor, which holds the promise of being superior to electrochemical batteries as a means of efficient regenerative electrical energy storage, and he also has supervised research on dynamic simulation and reliability analysis of complex safety-critical systems.
   He has co-developed and taught a required senior course in communication skills, including units on conceptual thinking, giving presentations, how to be effective in industry, cross-cultural skills, and engineering ethics, and he is developing a course on engineering design. Schindall has been co-director of the Bernard M. Gordon - MIT Engineering Leadership (GEL) Program since its inception in 2007. This co-curricular, experiential program is designed to develop the communications, teamwork, leadership skills, and character of undergraduates within the MIT School of Engineering (SoE), where more than half of the undergraduates participate in at least some portions of this program.
   
   Prior to joining MIT, Schindall was Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of Loral Space and Communications (a manufacturer and operator of commercial satellites), Senior VP and Chief Engineer for Globalstar (a 48-satellite LEO mobile-phone system), and President of Loral Conic (a manufacturer of telemetry systems for missiles and satellites). He received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from MIT in 1963, 1964, and 1967. During his graduate years he was lecturer and wrote the text for a 140-student introductory electronics course, received an award for excellence in teaching, and was chief engineer for WBCN, a commercial FM radio station.