May an increased focus on students' personal development contribute to increased motivation, better academic performance and teamwork in engineering programs?

This paper presents work in progress and the results obtained from a development project on personal development performed as a part of a curriculum reform work. The goal is to give the students a clear view of the challenges and possibilities that the future role as engineer offers and prepare for the expectations put on the modern engineer such as being able to integrate personal, professional and interpersonal skills. The result of this study is that we define personal development as having two dimensions: the inner dimension which is about self-knowledge and the outer dimension which is about social ability. Four topics will be dealt with in the curriculum: motivation and learning; team work; leadership, and career and business.