The Beneficial Effects of an Autonomously Operated Engineering Education Outreach Program: A Case Study of the Servant Leadership Program

In 2014, the Innovation Center for Engineering Education (ICEE) at a large university in South Korea benchmarked the Servant Leadership Program (SLP), an engineering education outreach program of a nearby university. SLP operated continuously while recently undergoing a critical change in the operating agency, from the ICEE to a student body participating in the program. The purpose of this case study documents the transformation of the SLP during its organizational change under a qualitative research framework. The results indicated this change caused the SLP to evolve serendipitously in three aspects: (1) improved program quality, (2) enhanced student leadership and professional skills and (3) extended scope and boundary of the program to broader communities. These improvements exceeded expectations from when the organizational transformation was planned and launched. The autonomously operated the SLP resulted in significantly more benefits to the community and participating students than under the previous management scheme. We hope that this autonomous approach can be disseminated to more universities, as an exemplary program for maximizing benefits to both the community and participating students.