Troost ILead Annual Review

"As engineering leadership educators and researchers, it behooves us to build on the wisdom of practicing engineers, our colleagues, our students, and the communities they come from to build a more sustainable and socially just future for ourselves and the generations that will follow," says Rottmann.

"When engineers develop contextually responsive technologies and apply their education to work in less visible sectors, we will be better positioned to address deteriorating infrastructure, the consequences of climate change, water quality, unsustainable reliance on non-renewable resources, as well as fairness and equity in AI and machine learning," she adds.

Rottmann is currently involved in quite a few projects, including a federally-funded study into tracking inequity in engineering career paths. Alongside colleagues Moore and Andrea Chan, as well as a team of graduate and undergraduate students, the work examines the mobility patterns of 982 Canadian engineers. The team is currently documenting their findings for scholarly and professional audiences.

Another project in its final stages is an engineering ethics and equity case study with an educational-change focus. After generating interview-based case studies on 22 engineers’ ethical dilemmas, integrating them into the engineering curriculum through two-to-three hour workshops, and evaluating the impact of these workshops on student engagement, Rottmann is leading the development of an introductory book for engineering educators.

"Emily and I are also in conversation with a colleague at the University of Melbourne to discuss a research partnership on social impact opportunities in the mining industry to be framed in the spring of 2024," adds Rottmann.

In reflecting about the impact she hopes to make in the years ahead, it is about fulfilling Troost ILeads’s vision: engineers leading change to build a better world. But also, "I would like to see the field take that on as a professionally relevant practice," says Rottmann, "through our research and even more importantly, through our teaching."

Currently, all projects include students and industry partners at every stage of conducting research, blending traditional literature reviews with industry partner conversations and student experiences, which are then integrated as learning objects into our undergraduate classes such as TEP343 (Engineering Leadership).

"Building on this cycle of professionally relevant knowledge creation, we mobilize our findings in classrooms, workplaces and scholarly settings by generating learning objects — inventories, case studies, trends," explains Rottmann. "Over time, we integrate these learning objects into our teaching and professional development efforts."

Looking ahead, Rottmann wants to continue to work with students and colleagues to examine what engineers wish to accomplish, listening to and amplifying voices of engineers who are not always heard.

"As a somewhat introverted person, I think my greatest impact has occurred through my writing, conceptual framing of projects, and supervision of graduate students," says Rottmann. "I also derive great satisfaction from collective, community-building efforts in the classroom, institutional equity committees, and engineering education research associations: the Canadian Engineering Education Association (CEEA), ASEE and the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers-Ethics (IEEE-ethics)."

As U of T Engineering wraps up 2023 and Troost ILead continues to build momentum in its programming, Rottmann will be an integral part of its upward trajectory in 2024 and beyond.

"I am grateful to Troost ILead, ISTEP, our students, staff and faculty, and professional practice partners for supporting leadership development in engineering," she says. "The impact of this effort depends on a network of connected colleagues from engineering, the natural sciences, humanities, and the social sciences speaking and listening across paradigms and disciplinary roots."