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Developing a Model to Assess the Demonstrated Leadership of Postgraduate students at the University of the West Indies, Trinidad and Tobago.

Stakeholders of the University of the West Indies, motivated in part by the Vice Chancellor, are focusing their efforts on transforming their (post)graduate ed. students into competent and effective leaders. To achieve this task, the existing theories concerning leadership and the various methods of assessment must be reviewed to determine the most suitable medium through which this objective may be achieved.To accomplish this objective a model was created and tested during a thirteen (13) week course, known as Practical Team Project, in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, to which the authors are affiliated. Within the course the students were assessed based on their demonstrated leadership of a team.The leadership attribute of the students enrolled in the course was evaluated using two methods: one (1) being an innovative multi-rater technique, used by human resource managers, known as 360-degree feedback. This technique incorporates the traditional staff-student assessment along with modern diversified assessment methods in higher education, such as self and peer assessment. In the second method, zero tolerance, nine (9) of the fifteen (15) Development Objectives of the Institute of Civil Engineers (ICE) were used to assess the team goals as assigned by leader.2 Based on the analysis and findings thus far, it can be said that the methodology selected for assessment, and the model to evaluate the demonstrated leadership attribute of the postgraduates prove suitable and favorable.From the post evaluation, the students were asked to comment on the course, in particular the assessment, and some were found saying “,they would recommend the course to others, the method of assessment was fair and the course was challenging, but manageable.”,On a global scale, this research could facilitate a shift from “,leadership in theory”, into “,leadership in practice”,, while introducing 360-degree feedback and zero tolerance into the wider body of assessment techniques currently being used in the Caribbean for higher education.

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