Leadership by Design
First-Year Honors Experience

The application for the 2021-22 M-CLIMB:Leadership by Design cohort is now open! All students admitted to Mines are eligible and encouraged to apply. If you want to have the opportunity to live with others in the cohort in the Engineering Grand Challenges (EGC) Themed Learning Community (TLC), be sure to indicate that as your first choice in your housing TLC application.

The early acceptance deadline is April 15th. All who meet this deadline will have a decision before the May 1st TLC deadline and will have priority acceptance into the EGC TLC.

The final deadline is April 26th. You will not receive your decision before the May 1st TLC deadline, but you can still choose the EGC TLC as your top choice if you want to be considered for any space that may still be available.

(There are only 40-50 spots available in the EGC TLC. Regardless of whether you live there, you will be invited to Leadership by Design events that happen in the TLC.)

Leadership by Design is a first-year signature honors experience that cultivates leadership, design, communication, creative thinking, and professional skills through a project-based approach focused on humankind’s biggest socio-technical challenges. We focus on the National Academy of Engineering Grand Challenge Scholar Program’s goals of improving life through sustainability, security, health, and the joy of living as we guide you in building the skills, mindsets, and capabilities you need to work toward solving complex problems.

Leadership by Design is your opportunity to work on interdisciplinary projects, to learn how to work with diverse people as we design for them, to gain skills and knowledge of leadership, to embrace entrepreneurial mindsets, and to think creatively as we define problems, pose solutions, and communicate ideas.  

All students will design a personalized learning and leadership portfolio. This experience is offered as a sequence of two courses in which students take one course in the fall semester and one in the spring.  The course sequence fulfills core curriculum requirements for all majors by replacing two required core courses – HASS 100:Nature and Human Values and EDNS 151: Design I

Leadership by Design will be a small, tight-knit community of 60 scholars for the inaugural program.  Components include seminars with professionals, local field trips, events, and socials.  Students also have the option to live together in the Engineering Grand Challenges Themed Learning Community (TLC).  (There are only 40-50 spots this year in the TLC.)  

Leadership by Design is open for all incoming freshmen to apply to.  In this competitive application process, we try to identify the incoming students that are best-suited for this signature learning experience – those that possess intellectual curiosity, leadership potential, creativity, and a desire to learn in new and exciting ways. On top of that, we try to identify those students that are comfortable with the ambiguity inherent in the grand challenges of this fast-changing, multicultural, and globalized earth and are willing to stretch the way they think about the world.

Leadership by Design is an entry point for the Grand Challenges Scholars Program, which is a 4-year experience that ends with certification from the National Academy of Engineering. It also serves as an entry point for other University Honors and Scholars programs, and as the foundation for any major. In particular, Leadership by Design will prepare you very well for the Bachelor of Science in Engineering (BSE) in the Engineering, Design and Society Department, and the Humanitarian Engineering (HE) programs. 

You can absolutely apply to both programs, but since they are designed to replace the same first-year courses, you’ll only be able to join one if you get an offer from each.

You can find out more about Thorson on the website – we recently posted some FAQ videos from our Winter Webinar that give a pretty good overview (thorson.mines.edu/faqs). 

You’ll likely also benefit from attending one of the Discover Mines online events, which are Saturday March 20th and Saturday April 10th. A Representatives from both first-year programs Leadership by Design will be at the UHSP “virtual booth” and the webinar and can answer any additional questions about how the two programs differ!