A Coaching Approach to Foster Scientific Production in Engineering Schools and Research Institutions

Introduction

We use Humanitarian Engineering (capital H and E) to refer to specialized areas of practice involving humanitarian response and community development (Park et al., 2021). Related terms may include Engineering for Developing Communities (Smith, 2019), Global Engineering (Thomas et al., 2021), and Development Engineering (Nilsson et al., 2014). All these concepts aim at emphasizing long-term global community development. For instance, Humanitarian Engineers may focus on implementing solutions that can impact developing countries while considering social–cultural issues (Shekar & Drain, 2016). This highlights the importance of Humanitarian Engineers ability to learn about cultures and engineering practices and the essential role educational systems can play in preparing generations of Humanitarian Engineers. At higher education institutions including Humanitarian Engineering schools, the student prepares his “Who Am I?” answer and build both his identity and motivation to carry on after graduation (Park et al., 2021). An important milestone in an engineer’s or any higher education graduate’s life is the graduation achievement based, in many cases, on an end of studies research project. When successfully defending the results of this research project, the engineer/graduate confirms his identity and motivation and is, since this valuable moment to him, ready to invade the professional world. Consequently, it is important that educational pathways and curriculums have as main objective to build identity and motivation within the student and contribute to the sustainable and the positive impact he is expected to be delivering to the community afterward. Coaching can fulfill this need and play an integrative role in advancing higher education as a community of learning and teaching (Cruz & Rosemond, 2017).

In this chapter, the author discusses how coaching can help in increasing the motivation, the self-confidence, the performance and the emotional stability of students during their research journey. She will share how a coach can inspire academic staff and research managers to help research students to produce more and of their best, while taking pleasure in their journeys. Coaches can utilize any of the available coaching models when coaching researchers. However, the author believes that the research process needs deep intervention at the individual level to create a solid ’Why’, to reach what is unseen and to hear what is unsaid. Drawing on the author’s own experience as Masters and Ph.D. degree holder, scientist, engineer, coach, mentor and supervisor, she could propose a new model based on the Hero’s journey concept, as defined by Joseph Campbell (Williams, 2019). This chapter presents the new model and discusses in five sections its applicability and positive impact. Section 1 is for an introduction. Section 2 is for the background. In section 3, the author introduces the Hero’s journey concept and explains how coaching can change a researcher’s life for the better and allow him/her to be a hero. Section 4 presents the new coaching model that the author advocates for scientific research coaching. In Section 5, the author discusses the model’s applicability and presents the results of a survey that has assessed the model’s impact. In Section 6, future research directions are shared. Finally in Section 7, there is a summary for the chapter’s findings and a conclusion.