Building the Future of Technical Leadership at METM with Dr. Sunshine Webster

Dr. Sunshine Webster: Foreign.

Katie: Welcome to Technical Leadership Talks, the podcast that brings you advice, insights and knowledge from industry leaders and experts on how to navigate managing in a technical field. Technical Leadership Talks is brought to you by Texas, a new university's Master of Engineering Technical Management, an online graduate program that trains industry professionals for leadership positions. I'm Katie, METM's digital marketer and your host for this episode. In today's episode, I'm joined by Dr. Sunshine Webster, the director of Texas A&M's UM Master of Engineering Technical Management program. We talk about where METM is right now, what's evolving inside the program, and what our vision is for the future as engineering leaders face new challenges in an ever changing workplace. When you look at METM today, what excites you most about where the program is headed?

Dr. Sunshine Webster: That's what's fun about still being new in my role. I get excited about so many things, but if I had to choose two, I would say our growth and our evolution. And so if I could talk about each of those very quickly, what's been fun about our growth is that we're reaching demographics of students we've never reached before. Uh, for instance, the cohort that we just started in January probably has the most diverse set of students in terms of industries, backgrounds, experiences than any other group of students that I've seen so far come through metm. So that the strategies that we've employed from a student recruiting standpoint seem to be pulling different demographics than we've seen, which then only makes our cohort stronger. So that's been an area of growth. In addition to that growth and paired a bit with evolution, we've added two aspects in this coming year. Um, one that we will. This will be my first opportunity to announce it. We have created an advisory board of industry executives. Um, because we're Texas A and M, we have a board of 12 and they are going to kick off this year. We have a meeting set for February, which will be our first meeting that we bring this new advisory board together. And I'm really looking forward to hearing the advisory board guide us and help us understand some of those gaps that they may be seeing. Um, in technical leadership, where they are. In addition to that evolution and growth, we are also growing the coaching aspect of our curriculum. So coaching is one of the really the differentiators of the METM program. Our students receive four semesters. So not just one or two semesters. Four semesters of, ah, coaching. Two on personal leadership coaching, and two on executive presence coaching. And over the course of this new 2026 year, we will be investing in our coaches to then be able to invest more into our students. The addition of the extra semesters of coaching was my first item of business when I joined was how do I add more coaching into our curriculum? So for two of the semesters, I pilot tested what can this look like? And the feedback we received from the current students was quite positive. So we evolved semester two and semester four coaching based on their feedback. And since that is a key differentiator, we're going to continue to evolve that and invest in our coaches, uh, a little bit more this year. And part of that evolution is going to be connected to outcomes and competencies we're hoping to see our students graduate with by the end of the Met program.

Katie: So what does innovation look like within MetM right now, whether in curriculum delivery or student experience?

Dr. Sunshine Webster: So I see evolution on both the curriculum and student experience side we mentioned on the student experience side, the coaching. But even more than just having additional sessions with a coach this year, we're working with our faculty, with our advisory board, and with industry leaders to identify key competencies we expect our graduate students students to demonstrate by the end of the program. So it's a little bit more than just learning outcomes. We want to see specific competencies, and we intend to measure those competencies at two different points in time. So this is one way that we're really changing the innovation of our program. Most academic master degrees aren't identifying competencies or measuring those competencies at different points of time. You might see this more often in an organization, less in an academic setting. And so we're merging the two, the organizational and the academic, to really make this a truly applied degree. And that is going to demonstrate value to the students and the student experience. But as it provides benefit to the students, it's also going to inform our curriculum. So the competencies will inform how we need to modify our curriculum. But I think it would be a shame to not discuss probably the biggest change to curriculum and the biggest innovation we need to explore moving forward, and that is AI and AI capabilities. We need to be doing a better job of leveraging and really using AI more Across every single course we teach. We are teaching technical leaders. These technical leaders are expected to leverage or learn how to leverage AI better for their roles every day. So why not do a better job of embedding that, leverage those lessons, those learnings in our courses. Now, one of my goals for Our curriculum in 2026 is across the board, every single course. I want to challenge our Faculty to find ways to leverage AI more. Some of our courses lend themselves more to it. But when the advisory board comes together in February, when my faculty comes together in February, that's the main item on our agenda is how do we collectively and individually in our courses embed AI, AI capabilities and learnings for our students so that not only it allows us to do a better job of innovating our curriculum to what technical leaders need today. Because let's face it, what technical leaders needed five years ago is not the same of what technical leaders need today. And AI is a huge part of that change and difference over the past five years. Um, we have had AI for quite some time, but not in the way that we have it today. And it is growing faster than our ability to adapt to that growth. So one of the things that we can do for our curriculum is help our students really take the content of our courses and the integration of AI capabilities and learn how to leverage them here to then take that to their jobs.

Katie: Yeah, and industry is changing with AI, but other ways as well. So how do you see the role of technical leaders changing over the next decade and how is met and preparing students for that future?

Dr. Sunshine Webster: It has to come with the using of their resources and tools. AI being the primary driver of this. Um, we can't prepare our students effectively for the future if we don't help them learn how to use the resources available and to leverage them better so that easier functions can be performed with the use of AI and they're able to, you know, focus on the higher cognitive and the human, the people side of things. AI is not going to replace the humanness in academia. I think there's been such a hesitation to embrace AI and AI becomes put in a, like ChatGPT. The most common. Right. One that's used is, um, how do we prevent our students from using it? I want to flip it around and say, why are we preventing students from using it? Why not encourage our students to use all resources available? I can challenge them in new and unique ways because they have tools that can enable them to do brainstorming, faster idea generation, faster organization, faster. Now let me challenge them to do something they can't already do, and let me challenge them to focus on the human side. AI can give them a great script. Let's use that now. Perform it. Perform the script to have a difficult conversation, for instance, and you don't have to write it. Let AI write that script for you, but you have to deliver it. And it's very different. Delivering a challenging, difficult Conversation than reading it off of a script. So the delivery is the most impactful part of it. Not the word said. It's how we deliver and how we engage and how we adapt to what the other person says. So AI can be a great tool for helping prepare people for the human side, but it cannot replace that human side. So I see this beautiful marrying of our resources that are available to students and the real world experiences of being human in an organization and a technical leader in an organization that metm, um, can help our students really be prepared to be effective.

Katie: I was having a conversation with Austin Gary, uh, who's one of our former students, and he was talking about leading different generations in the workplace and something he talked about. Um, I said he's a former student. So he went through the curriculum, um, and we have a huge emotional intelligence aspect to our program. And he said that has been something that he's seen needed with these new generations. It's because as AI is taking off and AI is a tool used in different jobs, it's like, it's almost like the need for the human connection is becoming a job skill, especially in these technical, um, organizations. And so I love that our program, we focus so much on personal leadership and emotional intelligence plus ca. I feel like we're hitting all of that that these future leaders are needing.

Dr. Sunshine Webster: You cannot be an effective leader. I would notice I put the word effect. You can be a leader without emotional intelligence or a high eq. You cannot be an effective leader without high eq.

Katie: Right.

Dr. Sunshine Webster: That is how you connect with your team. That is how you keep your team members. That is how you help to grow your team members. But that is also how you help your organization leaders with high EQ understand that balance between organizational needs and goals and my team member needs and goals.

Katie: So what opportunities do you see for METM students to have even greater real world impact through their coursework or capstone projects?

Dr. Sunshine Webster: Well, I feel like capstone projects is the obvious. Every one of our students completes a capstone project which allows them to demonstrate instant impact. They provide and drive an entire project for their organizations which demonstrates value and impact that METM has on their organizations. In fact, I received a text message from a student just yesterday who said that since he started his capstone project, he's received two promotions because of the value that that project is allowing him to demonstrate. But more than just the capstone, what I'm seeing is that our students are bringing to their organization these human, that emotional intelligence, the EQ side, which many master degrees aren't especially for technical leadership, aren't focused on specifically. And because our program explores and builds emotional intelligence from the beginning, our students are able to instantly add impact and value on the human and people side of their teams. Instantly. Um, I've even had students remark that the focus on emotional intelligence has helped them at home, may have saved a couple marriages. So the impact that we see our students experience isn't just on the technical side or the instant value they're demonstrating at work, but it's having, uh, an impact on them personally. Personally at home, personally on their teams. They have better relationships with their managers, with their team members. The ability to apply what they're learning today, the ability to apply that tomorrow, is allowing our students to see the instant value and impact METM provides.

Katie: So, looking ahead five to 10 years, what do you hope METM will be known for in engineering and leadership circles?

Dr. Sunshine Webster: I want us to be known as the program that creates emotionally intelligent technical leaders who build loyal teams and team members through authentic interactions. They're learning communication skills, persuasive skills, influential skills. They're learning how to understand their relationships and adapt their behaviors and to read into situations and to tap into the needs of someone else. I want to be known as the program that creates these strong leaders that have both that technical savviness and acumen. But then they're people that you want to work for, right? They are the leader that you want to work really hard for. When I think about the students when they graduate, I see them communicate better, more clearly, more effectively, more persuasively. And I see them changing their behaviors because they know that the outcome they're trying to drive needs a different approach, and that's success to me. When they're not leading from the vantage point of, well, this is who I am, how I am, take it or leave it, they're leading from. I know that this situation calls for this type of approach. And so because of that, I'm going to lead from that vantage point. And it might be uncomfortable for me, but I gotten comfortable with the discomfort. And I love that our curriculum teaches them that from the beginning.

Katie: For engineers and other technical professionals who are considering METM as their next step, what would you want them to understand about the future they could build through this program?

Dr. Sunshine Webster: What's really interesting about growing in these skills? Emotional intelligence, communication, leadership. There are instant personal benefits. Our students personally benefit by having stronger relationships at work and at home. They benefit by growing in influence skills and the ability to persuade others. Those are great skills to have personally so it's an easy sell to say, do you want to be more influential? And um can help you do that. But outside of the personal, when I think of the strong leaders we create, it's much bigger than um, the personal, much bigger. When you're a strong leader, there's a ripple effect. And that ripple effect creates high levels of trust, high levels of cohesion, mhm. Low levels of turnover and attrition, high levels of identification. Where people say that's my team, not I work on that team, they say that's my team. There's greater productivity, improved bottom line, strong leaders create high performing teams that want to work for you. Who doesn't want that?

Katie: Thank you for listening in to today's episode. Tech Leadership Talks is brought to you by Texas A and M University Master of Engineering, Technical Management. To learn more, visit metm Tamu. Edu.