AGLP: Leadership Skills, Emotional Intelligence, and Real-World Experience

08/19/2022

Pursuing a Ph.D. in Engineering requires a laser-sharp focus. But there’s also a lot of value in occasionally getting out of the lab and broadening your skill set. 

That’s where the SEAS Advanced Graduate Leadership Program (AGLP) comes in. AGLP is a competitive program designed to provide doctoral students with experiences and training beyond the research lab, to better prepare them for the wealth of opportunities available to them, including careers in academia, policy and public service, and business.

The program, developed and led by SEAS Deputy Dean Vincent Wilczynski, provides leadership skills, guidance in emotional intelligence, and real-world work experience. It has three distinct parts:

  • Leadership Development: A progression through a curriculum of seminars, experiential learning, reflections and mentorship on research-based leadership practices built on leadership competencies and emotional intelligence methodologies, spanning 26 topics.
  • Internal Internships: These involve part-time assignments for one semester in the office of a senior Yale leader where AGLP Fellows participate as members of that leader’s team to address issues and contribute to projects.
  • Professional Development: Funding is provided for AGLP Fellows to participate in professional workshops, conferences, and other professional development activities, including career coaching and skills-development.

The Leadership Development Program - the newest component of AGLP - consists of a 26-month “curriculum” that addresses Leadership Competencies, Emotional Intelligence and Leadership Practices. Through seminars on leadership and emotional intelligence, experiential practices, reflection on developing leadership competencies and mentorship, Fellows will develop knowledge and skills to be an effective leader. ​​More than 20 seminars from the last two years can be accessed here by the Yale community.

“Each leadership topic is addressed in four ways, with the seminar providing base knowledge, and experiential learning practicum, student reflections, and a mentoring session," Wilczynski said. "With this structure each topic is taught, reinforced, and then summarized over a period of two months with hopes that the process enables students to internalize each leadership topic.”

The seminars on Leadership Competencies span two perspectives: Leading Self and Leading Others. The content on these competencies has been adapted from work created at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy over the last decade. 

The seminars draw from methods based in research, including the work of authors Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner, who have developed a framework for leadership practices and leadership competencies. It also delves deeply into the concept of emotional intelligence, using research on the topic by Yale psychologists Peter Salovey (now Yale University president) and David Caruso (who hosts the emotional intelligence seminars), and psychologist John D. Mayer at the University of New Hampshire. 

Students accepted into AGLP enhance their training in one of three tracks: academia, for those who want to pursue a career as a professor or researcher; business and industry, for those who want to learn more about finance, management, product development, or technology transfer; and policy and public service, for those who wish to pursue policy, law, education, or outreach careers. AGLP also provides participating students with courses in the Yale School of Management. 

“The AGLP program has been an invaluable tool to graduate students for augmenting their skills and experiences,” said SEAS Dean Jeffrey Brock. “From internships to leadership seminars, it has contributed significantly to the excellence of our graduate programs.”

Mary Kate Mitchell Lane, a grad student in Prof. Julie Zimmerman’s Green Engineering research group, said her first-year mentor had been an AGLP fellow and recommended to Lane that she apply. 

“AGLP has been a blessing, knowing that I can apply to the conferences I want to attend or utilize resources I think would be helpful knowing that I have personal funding,” Lane said. “I used part of my AGLP funding last fall to hire a faculty application consultant to review my documents. It was excellent advice and I got interviews at all three schools that I applied to. This would not have been possible without AGLP funding.”

She added that it’s been especially helpful to have content in graduate school that applies to work, life, and beyond - especially now that she’s “out of the classes-taking-stage and am usually pinpoint-focused on my specific research.”

Ethan Lund, a graduate student in the laboratory of Prof. Jan Schroers, said he joined AGLP to acquire skills beyond the science, engineering, and communication capabilities he has learned from research. 

“The opportunity to academically study topics within emotional intelligence and leadership - trust building, mentorship, aligning values, assembling a team, and more - has been eye-opening and refreshing,” he said. “Beyond this, taking time to apply these lessons and critically reflect on how much and how often they impact my work and personal life has only reinforced their importance in my mind, to my growth, and well-being.”

Past AGLP projects include: 

  • An internship with Elm Street Ventures, a New Haven-based seed and early-stage venture fund with close connections to Yale. The AGLP fellow researched several projects, looking into technologies and competing interests.
  • Advocating for makerspaces, and consulting with universities and other institutions can make the best use of the spaces. This included a symposium at the White House in which an AGLP fellow gave a talk about the CEID’s best practices, and how it provides a wide range of programs and activities for the entire Yale community.
  • An internship at the Yale Enterprise Institute (YEI), which involved working on the patenting process with start-up companies.
  • An internship at Yale’s Office of Federal Relations, in which an AGLP fellow analyzed how innovations move from initial research to final product. She also worked with the Connecticut Department of Economic & Community Development to figure out state population patterns.