When Francis Wang ’21, MEng ’22 first joined the MIT Edgerton Center’s Solar Electric Vehicle Team (SEVT), his approach to engineering projects was “to focus my energy and attention on a tidy problem with neat boundaries that I could completely control.”
“But on Solar Car, I realized it takes a very different mindset to manage a substantial project with many moving pieces. It takes engineering leadership,” he recalls.
Wang was determined to strengthen his leadership skills. When he became Solar Car captain, he applied and was accepted into the Gordon Engineering Leadership (GEL) Program.
GEL’s courses and hands-on labs equip students with capabilities they need to lead and contribute to complex, real-world engineering challenges. The one- or two-year program for juniors and seniors complements MIT’s technical education, teaching teamwork, leadership, and communication skills in an engineering context. GEL students also benefit from personalized coaching, mentoring, industry networking, and career support throughout their professional lives.
“Before GEL, I saw the leadership parts of my role as a necessary evil to get to the actual interesting parts, which was the engineering,” says Wang. “The GEL Program gave me an understanding of how engineering leadership is crucial, because in the real world any project worth working on is larger than the scope of an individual engineer.”
In GEL he improved capabilities such as decision-making, taking initiative, and negotiating. He became a more effective SEVT team captain, able to navigate the challenges of taking an engineering project from concept to completion.
“It was often the case that the challenges I faced on Solar Car were not solely technical, involving aspects of communication, coordination, and negotiation. From GEL, I had the framework and the language to approach them,” says Wang.
Each year, 30-40 Edgerton students are accepted into the GEL Program. They come from a variety of teams and clubs including Arcturus, Assistive Technology Club, ChemE Club, Combat Robotics Club, Design Build Fly (DBF), Design for America, Electric Vehicle Team, Engineers Without Borders, First Nations Launch, MIT Electronics Research Society (MITERS), Motorsports, Robotics Team, Rocket Team, and Solar Electric Vehicle Team (SEVT).
“MIT’s best engineering students have GEL training and authentic project management experience with our competition teams,” says Professor J. Kim Vandiver, director of the Edgerton Center.
Edgerton project teams are entirely student-run organizations responsible for all levels of project and team management including fundraising, recruiting, designing, testing, risk mitigation, and project validation. The most successful teams have skilled leaders.
“Many of the excellent Edgerton project team students admitted to GEL are team or sub-team leaders who credit their GEL experience, particularly the experiential learning component, with improving their leadership skills,” says Leo McGonagle, executive director of GEL.
“It’s a win-win-win. GEL gets hard-working, motivated Edgerton Program students who are intent on self-development and improvement. Edgerton project teams often perform better with leaders who are GEL-trained. And the students gain leadership, teamwork, and communication abilities that they can use beyond their project team — in their capstones, course projects, internships, and jobs after MIT,” says McGonagle.
The overlapping connection between GEL and Edgerton truly becomes obvious when students begin to take ownership of project milestones.
“When you become the leader of a technical project, no one gives you a roadmap to team success,” says senior Hailey Polson, former captain of First Nations Launch team. “Technical expertise is not enough to leverage the talent and skills of an entire team or the ability to coordinate a multifaceted project; that’s where the tools, skills, and leadership theory I learned in GEL helped me bridge the gap between knowing how to accomplish our goals and actually leading my team successfully.”
Faris Elnager ’25 served as testing lead on the Motorsports team, which designs, manufactures, and competes with a formula-style electric race car every year.
“Making tough decisions was something that I learned in GEL. On Motorsports, I had to make high-stakes decisions about testing time that affected how we performed at a competition,” he says.
He found that GEL’s weekly Engineering Leadership Labs were a way to test for himself specific leadership capabilities that he could use to improve his Motorsports team.
“One of the most useful skills from GEL was evaluating your stakeholders and learning how to balance their needs. I remember thinking, we’re doing this right now in the [GEL] lab, and then we’re going back to the [Edgerton] shop to do this for real!” says Elnager. “It’s like a positive feedback loop. GEL labs make you better on project teams, and project teams make you better in GEL.”
Now a startup co-founder, Elnager says that the communication skills that he learned through Motorsports and GEL have been critical to his company’s early success. “You can build the best tech in the world. If you can’t pitch it to people, you’re never going to raise any money. Being able to explain a technical project to anyone, whether they’re an investor or someone in your industry, is something that’s incredibly valuable.”
Adrienne Lai ’25 served as both mechanical lead and then captain of the Solar Electric Vehicle Team. She recalls how her GEL training would kick in on race day.
“It’s quite tricky to be captain of a build team, because there’s no adult to tell you what to do. You have to figure it all out for yourself. When you’re competing, it can be very chaotic. You are trying to maximize a score by driving more miles, but that comes with a trade-off of spending energy or ending the day in a more rural area, or with less sun, so there are a lot of trade-offs to consider. Sometimes someone just has to make a decision. I was very comfortable doing that because I had learned how to take initiative, which is one of the GEL capabilities,” she says.
Now a course assistant in GEL, Lai helps design scenarios that enable GEL students to become better and more resilient leaders. She particularly enjoys playing the role of an uncooperative supplier.
“We close our store randomly. We don’t have what they need. We won’t tell them what we have,” she laughs. “Students get very frustrated. They think that we’re just being mean. But from a real-world perspective, that is all very true. It simulates unpredictability, which is important not just in a job, but in life.”
The value of the engineering leadership skills learned in GEL and honed on Edgerton project teams carries forward into industry, graduate studies, and entrepreneurial ventures.
“GEL preparation, coupled with authentic project management on a competition team, prepares MIT students for great careers in industry,” says Vandiver.
Henry Smith ’25 says he still relies on skills such as negotiation, communication, and understanding stakeholder needs that he used when he was a Motorsports mechanical lead.
“I was doing high-level management, planning, and organization on the team. Being in the GEL Program really increased my value for the team and helped me be prepared to enter the job field. When I graduated, I wasn’t worried about being ready or not. It was a definite yes,” says Smith.
As project teams continue to address ambitious engineering challenges, the synergy between Edgerton and the Gordon Engineering Leadership (GEL) Program ensures that as students graduate, they’re prepared to not only become strong technical contributors, but confident leaders prepared to tackle complex engineering problems in the real world.
Current U.S. Air Force Maj. Adam Fuhrmann ’11 is the GEL Program’s first astronaut candidate! He is one of 10 individuals chosen from a field of 8,000 applicants for the 2025 astronaut candidate class, NASA announced today in a live ceremony. Watch Fuhrmann’s introduction.
This is NASA’s 24th class of astronaut candidates since the first Mercury 7 astronauts were chosen in 1959.
The class now begins two years of training that includes instruction and skills development for complex operations aboard the International Space Station, Artemis missions to the Moon, and beyond. Specifically, training includes robotics, land and water survival, geology, foreign language, space medicine and physiology, and more, while also conducting simulated spacewalks and flying high-performance jets.
A Course 16 alum, Fuhrmann has served as a U.S. Air Force Fighter Pilot and Experimental Test Pilot for nearly 14 years. (Bio below.) While at MIT, he was a member of Air Force ROTC Detachment 365 and was selected as the third-ever student leader of the GEL Program as a GEL2 in spring 2011.
GEL Founding and Executive Director Leo McGonagle recalled that Fuhrmann was a very early participant in GEL from 2009-11 and one of only 11 students in the GEL2 cohort then.
“The GEL Program was still in its infancy during this time and was in somewhat of a fragile state as we were seeking to grow and cement ourselves as a viable MIT program. As the fall 2010 semester was winding down, it was evident that the program needed an effective GEL2 student leader during the spring semester, who could lead by example and inspire fellow students and who was an example of what right looks like. I knew Adam was already an emerging leader as a senior cadet in MIT’s Air Force ROTC Detachment, so I tapped him for the role of spring student leader of GEL,” said McGonagle.
Fuhrmann initially sought to decline this role, citing his time as a leader in ROTC. But McGonagle, having led the Army ROTC Program prior to GEL, felt that the GEL Student Leader role would challenge and develop Fuhrmann in other ways. In GEL, he would be charged with leading and inspiring students from a broad background of experiences, and focused exclusively on leading within engineering contexts, while engaging with engineering industry organizations.
“GEL needed strong student leadership at this time, so Adam took on the role, and it ended up being a win-win for both him and the program. He later expressed to me that the experience challenged him in ways that he hadn’t anticipated and complemented his Air Force ROTC leadership development. He was grateful for the opportunity, and the program stabilized and grew under Adam’s leadership. He was the right student at the right time and place,” said McGonagle.
Fuhrmann’s place for the next two years will be NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. When he completes basic training, Fuhrmann will receive his astronaut pin and become the 45th MIT alum to become a flight-eligible astronaut.
Fuhrmann has remained connected to the GEL program. He asked McGonagle to administer his oath of commissioning into the U.S. Air Force, with his entire family in attendance, at the historic Bunker Hill Monument in Boston. “One of my proudest GEL memories,” said McGonagle, who is a former U.S. Army Lt. Colonel.
Throughout his time in service which included overseas deployments, Fuhrmann has actively participated in Junior Engineering Leader’s Roundtable leadership labs (ELLs) with GEL students, and he has kept in touch with his GEL2 cohort.
“Adam’s GEL2 cohort meets informally once or twice a year, usually via Zoom, to share and discuss professional challenges, lessons learned, life stories, to keep in touch with each other. This small but excellent group of GEL alum is committed to staying connected and supporting one another, as part of the broader GEL community,” said McGonagle.
“We are tremendously proud of Adam for this notable accomplishment, and we look forward to following his journey through astronaut candidate school and beyond.”
Congratulations Adam!
About Adam Fuhrmann
Adam Fuhrmann, 35, major, U.S. Air Force, is from Leesburg, Virginia, and has accumulated more than 2,100 flight hours in 27 aircraft, including the F-16 and F-35. He holds a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and master’s degrees in flight test engineering and systems engineering from the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School and Purdue University, respectively. He has deployed in support of Operations Freedom’s Sentinel and Resolute Support, logging 400 combat hours. At the time of his selection, Fuhrmann served as the director of operations for an Air Force flight test unit.
2025 Astronaut Candidate Class
U.S. Army CW3 Ben Bailey, U.S. Air Force Maj. Cameron Jones, Katherine Spies, Anna Menon, U.S. Navy Lt. Cmdr. Erin Overcash, U.S. Air Force Maj. Adam Fuhrmann, Dr. Lauren Edgar, Yuri Kubo, Rebecca Lawler, and Dr. Imelda Muller.
Developing new technologies that improve people’s lives is what motivates Evan Hostetler most as an automotive engineer. So, it’s no surprise that he is currently working on the next-generation Chevy Bolt, which promises to make electric cars more accessible to more people.
“Electrification is where the investment and new developments are now,” said Evan ’22 (Course 2-A). “I enjoy the challenge of trying to do more with a technology, push the boundaries in some way. The Chevy Bolt might not be the highest performing electric car, but the goal is for it to be one of the most affordable for people.”
As a kid, Evan never dreamed he would be working on electric cars, but he sure dreamed of being in the auto industry.
“I’m a lifelong car lover. I’ve been reading car magazines since I was eight years old. I grew up around cars, worked at a mechanic shop in high school, and always intended to be in the auto world. It’s really cool to be someone now influencing new vehicles coming to market.”
His road to General Motors began when he landed an internship in Detroit as a sophomore. For a mechanical engineering major with a concentration in product design – and a passion for all things cars – it was a natural fit. GM hired him full time after graduation.
His first engineering role was developing components for seats (“incredibly complicated engineering, because of all the safety and durability and comfort aspects”) before moving to Assistant Program Engineering Manager on the Chevy Bolt program.
“I work with vehicle systems engineers who represent different areas of the vehicle – interior, exterior, chassis, battery, motors, etc. We work closely together to optimize the design and make design tradeoffs for profitability or performance. I also interact with other functions in the company such as purchasing, quality, and manufacturing.”
He credits his GEL1 and GEL2 experiences with giving him the capabilities and confidence to excel in those settings, something many of his peers lack.
“My GEL experience is one of the most valuable and stickiest experiences of my undergrad. Engineering is such a team sport. If you’re developing any product or service, you do not do that in a room with your door shut. You have to be able to work on teams and build those relationships to execute really hard engineering problems.”
Evan says the GEL program taught him how to be a better engineering leader – how to ask questions, negotiate, make tradeoffs, influence people, align and execute, and know when to lead and not to lead. The Engineering Leadership Labs gave him the opportunity to practice those skills.
“The labs taught me how to quickly evaluate situations, do up-front analysis, take the core information I needed, and have healthy tension and debate with other engineers coming from different perspectives.”
As a GEL 2, he further developed team-leadership skills that he uses on the job now. “I was tasked with building a team, deciding who would be the functional leaders, and creating a culture of excellence where everyone is contributing. I’m just starting to see the need for those skills pop into my career.”
It doesn’t hurt that many of the capabilities he learned as a GEL student are highly valued by GM.
“They have behavior guides for their employees that mirror the behaviors practiced in the GEL program. Essentially, GEL’s effective engineering capabilities are part of employee performance at GM. There’s a mutual understanding that this is what it takes to succeed.”
Evan makes a point of giving back to the program that helped launch his career. He returns to GEL annually to facilitate a class session on vehicle architecture decision-making in the 16.810 Engineering Design & Rapid Prototyping class. And you might find him at an ELL giving an industry perspective to current GELs.
He says his goal is to continue working on products that add value to people’s lives. If he were to apply the product design framework to his career, he would be “at the end of the concept specification stage. I’ve accumulated a number of experiences that inform future direction, set some hard points around non negotiables for the type of work I like to do, but I am still very open to the particular details of what that looks like and how it develops.”
Every January, GEL students learn engineering project management skills in a rigorous, hands-on course held at Camp Cody in Freedom, NH. Some GEL alumni return year after year to serve as project team mentors and course assistants.
As an electrical engineering student at Stanford University in the late 1970s, L. Rafael Reif was working on not only his PhD but also learning a new language.
“I didn’t speak English. And I saw that it was easy to ignore somebody who doesn’t speak English well,” Reif recalled. To him, that meant speaking with conviction.
“If you have tremendous technical skills, but you cannot communicate, if you cannot persuade others to embrace that, it’s not going to go anywhere. Without the combination, you cannot persuade the powers-that-be to embrace whatever ideas you have.”
Now MIT president emeritus, Reif recently joined Anantha P. Chandrakasan, chief innovation and strategy officer and dean of the School of Engineering (SoE), for a fireside chat. Their focus: the importance of developing engineering leadership skills — such as persuasive communication — to solve the world’s most challenging problems.
SoE’s Technical Leadership and Communication Programs (TLC) sponsored the chat. TLC teaches engineering leadership, teamwork, and technical communication skills to students, from undergrads to postdocs, through its four programs: Undergraduate Practice Opportunities Program (UPOP), Gordon-MIT Engineering Leadership Program (GEL), Communication Lab (Comm Lab), and Riccio-MIT Graduate Engineering Leadership Program (GradEL).
About 175 students, faculty, and guests attended the fireside chat. Relaxed, engaging, and humorous — Reif shared anecdotes and insights about technical leadership from his decades in leadership roles at MIT.
Reif had a transformational impact on MIT. Beginning as an assistant professor of electrical engineering in 1980, he rose to head of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), then served as provost from 2005 to 2012 and MIT president from 2012 to 2022.
He was instrumental in creating the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing in 2018, as well as establishing and growing MITx online open learning and MIT Microsystems Technology Laboratories.
With an ability to peer over the horizon and anticipate what’s coming, Reif used an array of leadership skills to develop and implement clear visions for those programs.
“One of the things that I learned from you is that as a leader, you have to envision the future and make bets,” said Chandrakasan. “And you don’t just wait around for that. You have to drive it.”
Turning new ideas into reality often meant overcoming resistance. When Reif first proposed the College of Computing to some fellow MIT leaders, “they looked at me and they said, no way. This is too hard. It’s not going to happen. It’s going to take too much money. It’s too complicated. OK, then starts the argument.”
Reif seems to have relished “the argument,” or art of persuasion, during his time at MIT. Though hearing different perspectives never hurt.
“All of us have blind spots. I always try to hear all points of view. Obviously, you can’t integrate all of it. You might say, ‘Anantha, I heard you, but I disagree with you because of this.’ So, you make the call knowing all the options. That is something non-technical that I used in my career.”
On the technical side, Reif’s background as an electrical engineer shaped his approach to leadership.
“What’s beautiful about a technical education is that you understand that you can solve anything if you start with first principles. There are first principles in just about anything that you do. If you start with those, you can solve any problem.”
Also, applying systems-level thinking is critical — understanding that organizations are really systems with interconnected parts.
“That was really useful to me. Some of you in the audience have studied this. In a system, when you start tinkering with something over here, something over there will be affected. And you have to understand that. At a place like MIT, that’s all the time!”
Reif was asked: If he were assembling a dream team to tackle the world’s biggest challenges, what skills or capabilities would he want them to have?
“I think we need people who can see things from different directions. I think we need people who are experts in different disciplines. And I think we need people who are experts in different cultures. Because to solve the big problems of the planet, we need to understand how different cultures address different things.”
Reif’s upbringing in Venezuela strongly influenced his leadership approach, particularly when it comes to empathy, a key trait he values.
“My parents were immigrants. They didn’t have an education, and they had to do whatever they could to support the family. And I remember as a little kid seeing how people humiliated them because they were doing menial jobs. And I remember how painful it was to me. It is part of my fabric to respect every individual, to notice them. I have a tremendous respect for every individual, and for the ability of every individual that didn’t have the same opportunity that all of us here have to be somebody.”
Reif’s advice to students who will be the next generation of engineering leaders is to keep learning because the challenges ahead are multidisciplinary. He also reminded them that they are the future.
“What are our assets? The people in this room. When it comes to the ecosystem of innovation in America, what we work on is to create new roadmaps, expand the roadmaps, create new industries. Without that, we have nothing. Companies do a great job of taking what you come up with and making wonderful things with it. But the ideas, whether it’s AI, whether it’s deep learning, it comes from places like this.”