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Entrepreneurship programs in higher education are typically housed under the umbrella of a business department or an engineering department. Within these departments and, within their university ecosystems more broadly, an oft stated goal is to develop within their students an "Entrepreneurial Mindset". However, this is often a somewhat nebulously defined concept. Many definitions of the Entrepreneurial Mindset include a mish-mash of skills, cognitive processes, habits, and worldviews. While this broad conceptualization of a mindset can be useful in marketing terminology, it lacks the specificity needed to allow for rigorous assessment. This Work-In-Progress paper will explore one approach to developing a rigorous definition of the Entrepreneurial Mindset as a cognitive construct, a method for quantitatively measuring development of the mindset through students' journey through an entrepreneurship program, and methods for qualitative analysis to better understand the nuances of how student perceptions, actions, and behavioral changes as they relate to entrepreneurial experiences within higher education. For entrepreneurship programs to have meaningful impact it is vital that they clearly define the mindset they are trying to instill in students. Further, these programs require a clear definition of the Entrepreneurial Mindset in order to engage in quality assessment of the educational impacts their programs are having. These two factors, clear definition of the desired mindset and high-quality assessment, must be present to allow for self-reflection on program impacts and to provide a framework for determining educational outcomes. We will present survey instruments for assessing the Entrepreneurial Mindset, or at least our definition of the Entrepreneurial Mindset, a semi-structured interview protocol, methodology for determining the vision of the Entrepreneurial Mindset that most applies to a given institution, and finally the initial analysis of 213 pre/post surveys collected during the fall semester 2021. Initial results are positive and significant for one of the three courses where the survey was deployed. The remaining two courses with substantially smaller class sizes have not yet reached a sufficiently large dataset to draw conclusions from. We will also discuss how inclusivity, race, and gender considerations can help guide the creation of instruments and definitions related to the Entrepreneurial Mindset. These assessment instruments were all deployed at a Michigan State University in 2020-2022. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past two decades, origami has been used in an increasing number of applications, across engineering disciplines. In addition to solar panels, surgical devices, robotic systems, and other engineering applications, origami has also been employed as an educational tool throughout the P-20 continuum. Specific to undergraduate engineering education, origami is most often used to teach advanced mathematical concepts, incorporating art into engineering, and creativity. At the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering (School) at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech), the undergraduate Origami Engineering course was historically taught with a strong theoretical focus, developing advanced mathematical skills in our students. As we prepare to launch a new Innovation and Entrepreneurship track within our undergraduate curriculum, we are reimagining the course to also concentrate on innovation and leadership within the design thinking process, to be included in the track along with its current position in our leadership minor. This work-in-progress paper will begin with discussions on the framework used by the instructors, that is, teaching the design thinking process in parallel to team formation and leadership skills. The paper will highlight the major advancements to the course syllabus and its assessments, acknowledge key partners outside of the department, share feedback from students and teaching assistants, and identify extracurricular pathways that extend naturally from the course (e.g., design labs and/or entrepreneurial pathways). The paper will conclude with lessons learned from the first offering of the new version in Fall 2021, before gathering input from the community and establishing formal evaluations prior to the next offering of the course in Fall 2022. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted society and engineering education as a whole. This paper describes the strategies and improvements that were implemented post COVID-19 pandemic to a two-credit hour engineering course targeted for first-year engineering and exploratory studies students at a Southeastern Public Research One Institution. It introduces the Grand Challenges and a corresponding scholars program defined by the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) that link society and engineering to improve and maintain quality of life for the twenty-first century. This course was developed to enhance student development in the essential engineering mindset and interdisciplinary system thinking to address the prescribed global engineering grand challenges. It interweaves engineering with the social and political sciences, encouraging students to explore the interactions between society and technology, including the influences of human behavior, culture, economics, ethics, and policy on the development and implementation of technologies. The course delivery is hybrid in nature, where students meet and actively engage face-to-face once a week and participate in an asynchronous meeting in the other half of the week. The curriculum includes invited speakers and experts in the various engineering disciplines, recorded videos, a midterm research essay, and a final group poster presentation and one-minute video on one of the Grand Challenges. The final presentation encompasses the four themes of the NAE's Grand Challenges and showcases the students' gained and applied knowledge for exploring opportunities to solve complex engineering challenges. The course is offered in the fall and summer semesters to over 1,500 students per academic year. All students who take this course and matriculate into their engineering major then can apply to the Grand Challenges Scholars Program (GCSP) to participate in the program as early as their sophomore year. Approximately 30 students are accepted into the university GCSP and may begin participating in the GCSP as soon as the summer prior to their sophomore year and have three years to complete the five required competencies of this program. Approximately 90 scholars actively participate in this program every year (sophomore, junior and senior engineering students). The five competencies include talent, multiculturalism, multidisciplinary studies, entrepreneurship and social cognition. Typically, the scholars start taking engineering classes and start working with research mentors to assist with the completion of the five competencies that prepare them to solve these challenges. Most incoming scholars lack experience in identifying specific research mentors. This program assists with that task. Through the first competency, also known as talent, the scholars engage in hands-on projects to help design innovative solutions through deep immersion in an academically rigorous environment. This paper describes the improvement efforts post COVID-19 to the course goals, structures, designs, and targeted recruitment efforts for the GCSP during the face-to-face and online course delivery, focusing on engineering research and introducing interested students to how to identify a research topic and choose a mentor. In addition, it includes reflections and insights gained from the course design, development, and facilitation, and offers future recommendations for improvements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Entrepreneurial activities have been driving forces of economies worldwide, bringing innovation and change to societies and pulling countries out of recessions. Increasingly, technology-driven innovation and entrepreneurship have become the key competitive advantages for a region or nation. There has been a push for universities to produce more entrepreneurs that can handle the challenges of today's world, and many engineering programs have begun to incorporate entrepreneurial education. Additionally, there has been an increased emphasis on systems thinking as an important capability for engineers as they seek to address complex challenges. This paper describes a scan of program offerings at Canadian post-secondary schools that address the topics of Entrepreneurship and Innovation and looks for evidence of Systems Thinking Teaching within the courses and curriculum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The needs assessment and requirements engineering domains involve tasks that help us fully understand a project's motivation. The functions of this domain include exploring the problem or opportunity and recommending a possible solution and development approach to the problem. From a project perspective, this is a critical stage as we can understand the value a viable solution brings to the customer and identify an appropriate development approach. A business investing resources to develop a solution must be pragmatic about the product development approach. Our research paper presents a framework to aid decision-making within this context. It involves considering attributes such as delivery cadence, risk, degree of innovation, and requirements certainty. Knowledge of the impact of these attributes on project outcomes will help educate engineers to become successful entrepreneurs and product managers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Computational thinking has become pervasive across many technical and creative disciplines. Creating a computationally literate workforce capable of recognizing and eliminating algorithmic discrimination requires diverse perspectives and lived experiences. Your Voice is Power is a 5-class period curriculum targeted for K-12 audiences that seeks to promote racial equity and increase interest in computing careers by integrating elements of computing, music, social justice, and entrepreneurship. Centering around the song "Entrepreneur" by Pharrell Williams, students engage in lyrical analysis to extract and explore themes of social justice using the OUTKAST Imagination framework. Students then engage with musical concepts from a computing perspective and implement them using EarSketch, a web-based, learn-to-code through music remixing platform developed at Georgia Tech. In this paper, we present a description of the Your Voice is Power Curriculum and results from an evaluation study. The curriculum overview includes a description of the content and activities, as well as a discussion of the frameworks and theories underlying the curriculum's development. We also present results from a program evaluation covering both a pilot and a full implementation of this newly developed curriculum during the 2020-2021 academic year. Participating high school students and teachers were recruited to respond to online surveys regarding their awareness of and interest in computing, music, and social justice, and their experiences in the competition. Teachers felt that competition participation conferred a variety of benefits to their students and expressed positive attitudes around the social justice focus of the curriculum. Students provided largely positive feedback on the competition and reported a positive impact on their understanding of social justice and equity. Students also demonstrated high levels of understanding of the ubiquity of coding skills and applications. Taken together, program evaluation results show that this integration of themes is effective in engaging students in difficult conversations about race while building interest in computing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We recently developed a multilayered mentor model for our popular Engineering Entrepreneurship Summer Institute at Villanova University. Our multilayered mentor model layers the experience, social capital and empathy associated with peer mentoring together with the transfer of knowledge, skills, and ability associated with traditional mentors. Peer mentors, selected from recent graduates of our Engineering Entrepreneurship Summer Institute, were paired with successful entrepreneurs to guide student venture teams. The multilayered mentor model, developed to reflect current best mentor practices, included mentor matching, goal setting, coaching and guidance. Our exit survey informed us that the multilayered mentor structure led to an enhanced and empowered learning environment for student venture teams. Additionally, peer mentors indicated strong enthusiasm for the personal relationship with the senior mentor and an increased desire for engagement in entrepreneurship. In this paper we discuss formation of the multilayered mentor model, outcomes from implementation of the model within our Engineering Entrepreneurship Summer Institute and discuss plans for future development. An overview of pilot model activity, including mentoring structure and topics are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The NSF S-STEM funded program titled Fostering Leaders in Technology Entrepreneurship (FLiTE) at Western Carolina University seeks to cultivate entrepreneurial thinking in engineering and engineering technology students with the goal of creating graduates who bring impactful contributions to industry through the generation of creative technology ideas and new businesses. Over its planned six-year duration, this project will fund scholarships to thirty-six unique full-time students with financial need who are pursuing bachelor's degrees in engineering or engineering technology. The project aims to cultivate skills in entrepreneurial thinking among undergraduates in engineering and engineering technology by involving a cohort of students across academic years in an intensive learning community and bringing their technologyoriented product ideas from concept to market. Scholarship recipients will be linked through cohort teaming sessions with campus resources, local industry partners and experts, and faculty mentors, to propose, critique, select, develop, and implement commercially viable technology products. The novel approach to engineering education developed through this project will serve to enrich the creative potential of new graduates in technical fields and expand small business creation and employment, both of importance to growth regions where there may be fewer large corporate employers. Key dimensions of those who exhibit entrepreneurial thinking include a growth mindset, a regular practice of creativity, and high personal self-efficacy. With entrepreneurism seen as an enabling force to overcome employment and income divides between urban and rural job markets, dimensions of entrepreneurship that may be taught are of high interest. The project will investigate the impacts of the learning community on the learned dimensions of the entrepreneurial mindset and will examine the effects of program interventions on entrepreneurism in scholarship recipients as compared with other students in the host department. This paper will outline activities from the inaugural year of the program including scholar recruitment and demographics, cohort meeting activities and dynamics, invited speaker topics, scholar perceptions of the program to date, and perceptions of their own aptitudes for entrepreneurial thinking. Findings from these activities may inform the prospective structure of similar entrepreneurship programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Center for Bio-mediated and Bio-inspired Geotechnics (CBBG), a National Science Foundation (NSF) third generation (Gen-3) Engineering Research Center (ERC), developed, implemented, and evaluated across its four partner universities and a fifth invited university a one-credit graduate-level course on connecting research to the broader community. The curriculum developed for this course is aimed at educating graduate and senior-year undergraduate students on the skills necessary to connect their research to broader technical and non-technical issues within the engineering profession and the global community. Content is aligned with the Center's and the NSF ERC program's shared goal of educating students in five areas: Entrepreneurship, Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment, Leadership, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, and Professional Development. The five-week, one-credit course was developed through collaboration among faculty at each of the partner universities. The course included both synchronous and asynchronous components delivered through video conferencing and a common learning management system to students from the four partner institutions, Arizona State University, Georgia Institute of Technology, University of California - Davis, and New Mexico State University, and from a fifth invited participating university, the University of Washington. The course was initially launched during the 2020 Fall semester with 30 students. To measure the Center's strategic goal of developing students with the desired skills and preparing them to be successful in industry and academia upon graduation, the mastery of the curriculum by the students was evaluated by an external evaluation team through a web-based survey. Findings from this survey, along with modifications and adjustments that were incorporated into the curriculum when the course was offered again in Fall 2021, are discussed herein. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, interest in entrepreneurship education to advance technological innovation has grown significantly. Drawing from the business community, entrepreneurship education programs have been introduced to broader communities, including research and science. As these efforts have expanded, so has an interest in cultivating a pipeline that considers diversity, equity, and inclusion. The purpose of this study is to use Critical Race Theory to examine how entrepreneurship programs can foster an inclusive environment through understanding the perceptions of racially minoritized engineering faculty (i.e., persons who identify as African American/Black, Hispanic/Latinx, Native American/Alaskan Native, and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander) of an entrepreneurship program. Seven racially minoritized engineering faculty of an entrepreneurship training program participated in 60-minute semistructured interviews to understand their sense of belonging in the program and their experiences related to respect and inclusion in the program. Two themes emerged from the data: 1) reducing structural barriers and rectifying harsh climate conditions can improve participants' overall sense of belonging and 2) representation of racially minoritized populations can be improved through more inclusive recruiting and marketing efforts. Overall, this research aims to inform practices that advance diversity, equity, and inclusion in STEM entrepreneurship programming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Educators and policymakers are increasingly interested in making entrepreneurship education accessible to engineering students, including through entrepreneurship competitions. The current study explored the role of entrepreneurship competitions on the entrepreneurial intention of engineering students. We hypothesized that entrepreneurial self-efficacy mediates the effect of entrepreneurship competition on entrepreneurial intention. In addition, we hypothesized that entrepreneurial motivation moderates the effect of entrepreneurship competition on entrepreneurial intention. Data were collected from 283 engineering students using a structured questionnaire and analyzed using structural equation modelling. The results revealed that entrepreneurship competition was positively associated with the intention to undertake entrepreneurial activity, which was also partially mediated by self-efficacy. The findings demonstrated a positive moderation effect of entrepreneurial motivation on the relationship between entrepreneurial self-efficacy and entrepreneurial intention. This study provides empirical support for devising a variety of entrepreneurship competitions that can further support students to become entrepreneurial engineers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The National Science Foundation's (NSF) Innovation Corps (I-Corps) Program was created to stimulate innovation and benefit society by training academic entrepreneurs to participate in technology commercialization and entrepreneurship. Defining outcomes and measuring the impact of a national initiative such as I-Corps is complex for many methodological and practical reasons. This study describes the ICorps program structure and highlights the role that regional I-Corps Nodes play in training and evaluation activities. Interviews with Node administrators highlight the diversity of approaches to evaluation activities and the existence of key evaluation challenges. They also offer insights into how these challenges could be overcome with more support and coordination nationally and across regional ecosystems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]