What do you do when your students want to lead?

Engineering students in the NSF-sponsored foundation coalition (FC) program at the University of Alabama formed a student coalition team “to help provide organization, communication, and support to the students of the coalition”. The impetus for the formation of the student coalition team came from students, not faculty. This paper describes the student coalition team and explores how the structure of the foundation coalition program at the University of Alabama, primarily through enhanced student-student, faculty-student, and faculty-faculty interaction and communication, helped to create an environment which gave rise to the student coalition team