Falling Into Leap Sessions

Dr. Ebonee Williams and the 2016-2017 Gordon Scholars

It’s a new fall quarter, which means there’s a new undergraduate and graduate LEAP cohort at the Gordon Engineering Leadership Center.

On October 3, the Gordon Center held its first fall quarter LEAP (Leadership Engineering Applied Practice) session, led by Dr. Ebonee Williams. This fall quarter, 23 undergraduate and 10 graduate students are participating in the LEAP Sessions as part of the Gordon Scholars program.

The first day of LEAP sessions are always the most interesting, as new students are eager and don’t know what to expect. As we say at the Gordon Center, “Leadership is a verb – we must learn by doing”, and that is exactly what the LEAP students did on their first day.

Students were challenged to identify other students’ personality types by asking everyday questions in a form similar to speed dating. They worked to identify other personality types according to four distinct axes from Myers Briggs: introversion vs. extroversion, sensing vs. intuition, thinking vs. feeling, and judging vs. perceiving. While some students felt confident about the task at hand, others were daunted by the idea. At the end, all students walked away with the ability to identify people they might want to recruit on their team.

In a reflection conversation post-exercise, most LEAP students discovered that in doing this exercise, they were naturally able to identify others personality types by asking simple everyday questions and listening. Students realized the exercise provided a great tool for future recruiting, projects, and for efficient group interactions with colleagues. They also received their own Myers Briggs results to better understand their own preferences. To learn more about our new fall 2016 cohort, visit our website.

LEAP Sessions are held the first quarter of every school year for seven sessions at the Gordon Center. If you are interested in joining the Gordon Scholars program or would like more information, please email us at GordonCenter@ucsd.edu.To learn more about our new Fall 2016 cohort, visit our website here.