Search

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 College of Engineering (CoE) is using the Kern Entrepreneurship Education Network (KEEN) model to develop an entrepreneurial mindset while meeting technical objectives in a digital communication course. The authors attended a three and one-half day meeting called the Integrating Curriculum with Entrepreneurial-Mindset (ICE) Workshop to help students develop an entrepreneurial mindset. [1] During the workshop, the authors developed a set of learning modules focused using KEEN's model. The student must deliver a presentation and a written report focused on the entrepreneurial mindset for a digital communication course, identified as EE 463. Several Entrepreneurial-Minded Learning (EML) activities prepared students for the research project and report. Although the senior and adult students were exposed for the firsttime to the KEEN framework, they performed tasks to foster an entrepreneurial mindset based on the following topics covered in six of the eleven weeks: Internet of Things, Light Fidelity (LiFi), Deep Learning/Artificial Intelligence, Smart Everything (Smart Cities, Smart/Driverless Cars, etc.), Bitcoin/Block Chain Technology, and 5G and Enabling Technologies. Each student must summarize their findings in a discussion board for the assigned topic and make at least one connection of a communication system concept studied in class. Their discussion must also include either a business opportunity/business model, economic or social implication. Each student was asked to develop a discussion question to lead a 10-15 minute discussion for the next lesson. The discussion boards are intended to prepare the students for doing the research paper and presentation. An end of course survey and student feedback are presented. [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]

What do we still need to learn about entrepreneurship education for engineers? Who better to answer this question than a group of engineering educators, educational researchers, practicing entrepreneurs and innovators, and engineering students? Such a group was convened in August 2014 to examine and reflect on current knowledge of students' entrepreneurial development and pathways, entrepreneurship programming models, and the efficacy of various curricular approaches. The event, known as the Epicenter Research Summit, was held at Stanford University and co-hosted by scholars at three universities; 70 attendees from 29 different institutions and organizations contributed to panel and poster sessions over two days. These sessions and the continuous dialogue, along with a series of individual and group exercises, allowed this community to identify gaps in knowledge about educational environments and pedagogies that support engineering students in becoming creative, innovative and entrepreneurial thinkers. Findings from the interactive exercises led to the identification of three major research areas for future work: Linking Outcomes to Reform, Understanding Student Diversity, and Examining Contexts. Each of these areas includes a wide range of questions that could be collaboratively pursued in the coming years to direct the course of entrepreneurship and innovation education in engineering. This paper reviews such questions and makes recommendations for the next phase of both research and community building in this emergent space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Proliferation of Lean Launchpad, a curriculum designed by Steve Blank and adopted by National Science Foundation as Innovation-Corps program, has created myriad opportunities for commercialization of existing technology and funding innovative ideas which otherwise may have never seen the light of the day. Identifying the merits of funding research based on value proposition and customer demand, key components of the Business Model Canvas, has created a paradox for Endowment Funds, Family Offices and even Federal Funding agencies on whether to continue support for fundamental research in hi-tech laboratories or to think like a Venture Capital investor hoping to hit a home-run. In a world where the focus is on market viability of research, is the future bleak for fundamental scientific curiosity? Are we on the right path turning Endowment Funds, Family Offices and Federal agencies into Venture Capitalists? Is there any motivation for researchers to get their hands dirty at fundamental scientific curiosity when you can just apply a business model canvas to almost everything? This paper explores the question whether universities with higher federal funding for fundamental research are also able to create more opportunities for entrepreneurship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One area of the non-digital entrepreneurial ecosystem showing strong growth is the food service sector. More specifically, the food truck business. Currently, the food truck business generates roughly 3 billion dollars of revenue annually. The relatively low barriers to entry and attractive returns on investment makes this an appealing path for culinary entrepreneurs over the traditional brick and mortar option. A rising interest in food service businesses among entrepreneurs has led to the development of online simulations for instructional purposes, such as the New Venture Simulation: The Food Truck Challenge. Designed by Michael A. Roberto and made available online from Harvard Business Publishing for Educators, the food truck challenge provides a safe, yet fun, simulation to teach students the value of strategy and entrepreneurism. Concurrent with the development of simulations that demonstrate entrepreneurial intent, new online survey instruments are available to gain insight into entrepreneurial mindedness. The objective of this paper is to determine if data collected from two survey instruments, Entrepreneurial Mindset Profile (EMP) and Builder Profile 10 Index (BP10), predict behavior in the food truck simulation. For example, if data from a mindset profile demonstrates a high tolerance for risk taking, does a student's actions in the simulation demonstrate a more risk tolerant profile?. For this research, approximately 150 students majoring in math, science, or engineering completed both online survey instruments, EMP and BP10, and participated in the Food Truck Challenge simulation. The study was designed to include an equal number of first-year students and seniors, with the seniors enrolled in either an entrepreneurship course or an engineering management course. First-year students took an introductory entrepreneurship course as part of their participation in an entrepreneurship living-learning community on campus. During the online simulation, students worked individually to achieve maximum revenue over five weeks, with the opportunity each week to pursue one of three options: (i) conduct business research and analysis, (ii) prospect a new location with a low-capacity pushcart, or (iii) commit to full scale by parking the food truck in a specific location. Students make decisions about the three courses of action and menu item(s) to offer in hopes of finding the best menu-location combination, thereby yielding the highest sales and "winning" the simulation. The results of this research are particularly relevant to faculty and administration interested in understanding the value (predictability of behavior) gained from commercially available entrepreneurial mindset assessment instruments. It is conceivable that one-day entrepreneurial mindset instruments may predict entrepreneurial behavior while on campus and post-graduation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The process of creating innovative technology applications is shifting to smaller development teams of entrepreneurial minded individuals who use a dynamic landscape of tools and much creativity. This new work environment calls for novel methods to best prepare its work force. In this paper we describe an All-Class Project-based Undergraduate Course as one possible effective approach and present the results of a survey to quantitatively measure the effect of the course on preparing the students and graduates for this new work environment. We also describe the course design, the hypothesis of effect, the survey design, the data collection, and analysis. Based on the participants' responses and the quantitative analysis presented in this paper, we confirmed quantitatively that the course has achieved its goal of preparing our undergraduates for the ever changing and challenging environment for developing technology applications and services. Overall, they believe that the impact on their career is worth the "value of contribution" they have exercised and estimated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to describe an honors critical thinking/problem-solving course sequence. Highlighted is a first year general education critical thinking/problem solving course in science and technology taken by the science, technology and engineering majors during a special undergraduate honors science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education experience. The target competencies are further applied throughout the students' subsequent academic major program of study. This sequence also incorporates opportunities specifically for entrepreneurially spirited honors students to provide them with an early experience in developing solution entrepreneurship. The sequence was built on the premise that collaboration by a variety of entities from across the spectrum of government, business, and social enterprise is needed to solve society's critical problems--particularly if we seek to create a new solution economy. A solution economy is one that has shifted away from a government-dominated economic model to one that is driven by new innovators who are closing the gap between what government provides and what citizens need. 1 These new innovators are called solution entrepreneurs. Crucial to this shift is the establishment of a growing cadre of entrepreneurs with a foundation of cognitive innovation skills, i.e., a new way of thinking about complex global problems in a solution economy. This paper first defines cognitive innovation as identifying and applying mental models to develop a more integrative way of thinking about complex global problems while creating a solution economy. Secondly, examples of how critical thinking/problem-solving skills are applied to study complex global sustainability problems during the undergraduate general education experience are provided. Subsequently, examples of how students apply these skills during their major's course work, including the culminating Honors Thesis, are illustrated. It should be noted that while there are many other entrepreneurial skills, e.g., finance related ones, developed throughout this curriculum by students, this paper specifically focuses on critical thinking and problem solving skills necessary for the solution entrepreneur. 2 Honors students begin their first year with a specific general education course designed to provide the foundation for critical thinking and problem solving. During the first half of the course, students engage in a variety of critical thinking learning experiences that teach them how to: develop analysis mapping for making decisions; use design heuristics; utilize comparative, ideological, deductive, and inductive reasoning; and understand the relationship between scientific inquiry and problem solving. During the second half of the course, students work in teams to apply these critical thinking skills to a complex global sustainability problem, investigating how a problem becomes a problem and exploring current solutions and projected future solutions. Relevant examples of how students apply these cognitive innovation skills within their academic major as they further develop their science, technology, and engineering knowledge are then provided. The culminating Honors Thesis then extends students' initial inquiry of the complex global sustainability problem they have studied and focuses effort on effective solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Educators should always seek opportunities to enhance their course material and equip students with skills to help them achieve success in their career after graduation. One skill that has drawn much attention recently is the entrepreneurial mindset. This paper presents a project-based learning approach that infuses some of the soft skills associated with the entrepreneurial mindset with the technical skills of electric circuit analysis and design through a specific multi-phase, multi-disciplinary project. The course is offered to engineering students majoring in electrical, computer, mechanical, civil, and engineering education. The expected outcomes are effective collaboration and communication, persisting and learning from failure, management, and solving ambiguous problems. In addition, the paper presents all involved details in this project including the phases mentioned above, rubrics used for project evaluation, assessment of students' attitude toward this activity, assessment of project outcomes, and the related ABET student outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the apparent benefits of fostering creativity, the question largely remains at how to develop and deliver a curriculum that can stimulate such innovative thinking. Several models have developed on an attempt to ground creative thinking and its usage such as schema theory from Bartlett, Johansson's Medici Effect, Koestler's biassociation or Tom Kelley's faces of innovation. While the first three focused more on the structure and processes of innovation, Kelley's work took a more personal approach, defining several characters that play different roles in the creative process. Michael Michalko rebrands biassociation as "conceptual blending," but essentially works from the same base theory as Koestler. Thus, biassociation--the process of combining seemingly unrelated concepts--has quickly become the operating frontrunner of theories on creative conceptualization. Implemented traditionally in entrepreneurial practices, this paper summarizes the current state of art in biassociation and techniques to help students to operationalize the concept. This paper explores what are the implications and possibilities for biassociation in the classroom and what a curriculum with biassociation as its fulcrum might look like. [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]

This paper describes Pathways to Innovation (Pathways), a national program that uses a team-based guided change process to help faculty and institutions introduce and embed innovation and entrepreneurship into formal and informal educational experiences for undergraduate engineers. The paper briefly reviews the program design, its researchbased foundations, and the sequence of activities for the initial cohort of twelve teams from twelve different schools. Initial results from teams' efforts, some of the "lessons learned" from the evaluation of the first year, and the implications of those lessons both for expansion of the program and for engineering education more generally are discussed. Each school's Pathways effort is led by a team1 and the teams themselves are in turn gathered into a national network.2 The schools vary widely in their institutional profile with regard to size, student demographics, governance, initial breadth of entrepreneurship education opportunities for engineering students, and availability of off-campus entrepreneurship opportunities in the surrounding region. Despite these differences, multiple factors were identified over the course of the program year that were associated with success in making entrepreneurship education more available and accessible for undergraduate engineering students. Participating schools implemented strategies that included introducing new courses and programs, developing learning spaces, and creating faculty development activities. Program staff modified elements of Pathways in response to formative evaluation activities, as well as to strengthen specific components associated with team success. The program now includes 37 schools and will continue to expand; while exciting, this growth presents scaling challenges for program staff. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two faculty from the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of North Carolina at charlotte received a grant from VentureWell to develop a course in innovation and entrepreneurship. They offered the course in the spring 2013, spring 2014 and spring 2015 semesters. This course consisted of graduate and undergraduate students from several disciplines working on multiple projects; each project was unique, formed out of student or faculty ideas. The faculty teaching this course developed a strategy to nourish the innovation and entrepreneurship in young engineer by allowing all engineering majors to register for the course and by forming multidisciplinary teams that worked on the innovation of the idea, developed an executive summary of the project and looked into the financial support of the invention. Each team had to analyze the opportunity at hand, provide a thorough market analysis, and write a report about the project (from inception to commercialization). Students on each team were encouraged to continue to work together in the College of Engineering Senior Design I and Senior Design II courses with the intent of them being able to commercialize the design. Part of the faculty effort was to build and promote a culture of innovation among engineering students; therefore as a follow up from the course offering in the spring 2013 the faculty supported two projects during their capstone senior design courses for the fall 2013-spring 2014 semesters with a strong plan for commercialization of the product. These students were motivated, self-driven and excited about their projects and the possibility of launching a business successfully by using our program, and taking advantage of the resources available to them from our University's Office of Technology Transfer. This support allowed these two teams to design and prototype the product during the fall 2013 and spring 2014 semesters. These two teams received multiple cash awards while competing in the State of North Carolina Social Entrepreneurship Conference and the Ventureprise business competition. One team built a company which is still active even after the participants graduated with their Baccalaureate degrees. Thus far the faculty have supported four entrepreneurial teams in the capstone senior design courses. W hile the entrepreneurship course gives a chance for our students to work with a faculty on the development of a new product, linking it to the capstone senior design course strengthens the foundation for our engineering students to embark on new opportunity when feasible. This combination helped our students identify opportunities to implement all ideas, helped individual student learn about managing business growth, and provided methods of using critical thinking. The Technology Innovation and Entrepreneurship course linked with our senior design capstone courses empowers our graduates to confront challenging business cases and to seek solution from a business perspective. Our goal is to encourage our engineering students to work with business students from the inception of an entrepreneurship project until commercialization. This paper describes in detail the successes of these entrepreneurial Senior Design teams. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most of the students engaging in entrepreneurship at engineering schools will not start their own businesses as their first employment. Most will enter industry. The challenge to use their entrepreneurial interests and skills then resides in their abilities to innovate, engage, communicate and lead in an industrial environment to identify and pursue new opportunities and directions for these organizations. Building on an extensive study conducted with a team comprised of faculty from four leading colleges, and encompassing an industrial advisory group composed of leaders from ten companies spanning large material based corporations to large consumer products goods companies to recognized world class innovation companies, this paper will describe the collaborative process used to identify the areas noted as most critical for intrapreneurship, and the recommended next steps to develop skills in these areas through engineering education. The T-shaped engineer and T-shaped skills, that address several of the key areas, will be used to illustrate both curricula-based and non-curricula-based educational opportunities. This will include a new collaborative internship with specific metrics to ensure that the industrial experience embraces, tests for, and collaboratively measures the progress in the development of the intrapreneurial skill. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hardly any evidence exists to support purposeful innovation and entrepreneurship education specifically targeted to computing students in comparison to engineering students. Because computing is closely aligned with engineering in much theories and practices, it is reasonable to assume that the visions of future computing professionals would be similar to those of future engineers. Therefore, it is realistic to expect that while in college future computing professionals should at least be similarly educated and trained in business practices that expose them to entrepreneurship in the context of teamwork and innovation. This paper discusses the design, implementation, learning outcomes, and student engagement in a National Science Foundation funded technology entrepreneurship course offered in an urban university computing program. This course primarily focused on teamwork, innovation, and entrepreneurship. It sought to train students in becoming well-rounded business-minded technocrats grounded in disciplinary theories and technical skills as well as in innovative thinking, entrepreneurship, problem solving, teamwork, and communication skills. The course was supported by case studies of technology entrepreneurs as well as guest lecturers and mentors. The case studies mainly highlighted the experiences and advice of successful entrepreneurs through their business development ventures and problem solving strategies. The guest lecturers included both academic and non-academic professionals experienced in innovation and entrepreneurship. They provided the students with experiential knowledge and insights on teamwork, innovation, and entrepreneurship including specific examples of business problems encountered. The mentors were either technology entrepreneurs or senior level managers from industry versed in teamwork, innovation, and entrepreneurship; they assisted the student teams in financial or healthcare problem identification appropriately defined for solutions within the constraint of the semester; they further provided guidance, realism, and insight to the teams' ideas for a feasible problem solution. These interventions helped to supplement the content provided in the case studies and lectures. A central product of the course was the creation of a business plan developed to support an innovative problem solution to satisfy a financial or healthcare customer's need with its subsequent pitch. Students' performance in and enthusiasm for the course were generally positive as evidenced by the course grade percentage errors, learning performance indicators, interviews, and surveys. In addition, some of the products/services were judged by industry experts to be capable of satisfying the identified customer need if they were further developed. Nothing should be inferred from these results, however, because of the small sample size of 12 students, but the results seem to suggest that this approach to teaching teamwork, innovation, and entrepreneurship is meritorious in providing computing students with the professional skills needed for the global knowledge economy. The Technology Entrepreneurship course as described in this paper differs from most of the other related entrepreneurship courses in that it provided formal pedagogical instruction in teamwork, innovation, and entrepreneurship. Moreover, its assessment and evaluation included not only surveys, interviews, and performancebased assessment, but also journals as well as examinations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper describes the new Entrepreneurship and Innovation minor at Penn State. The unique inter-college minor consists of several clusters that center on entrepreneurship and innovation in relation to different majors, industries, and contexts. An assessment plan was developed in conjunction with the minor and initial results will be reported. The overall goal of the assessment is to track the students' progress, knowledge, skill development, and attitudinal changes as the students proceed through the minor and begin their careers. As the first step in this process, students from the core classes of the minor were asked to complete a survey near the beginning and end of the semester to capture their attitudes toward entrepreneurship and innovation. A vast majority of the students who completed the survey were enrolled in their first entrepreneurially focused class. As a result, the survey responses provide a unique opportunity to examine students' initial thoughts about entrepreneurship and innovation, which will serve as a baseline for future assessments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditional chemical engineering curriculum focus on the math, science and engineering fundamentals culminating in a senior year process design course. These courses are excellent preparation for most chemical engineering jobs, but they typically omit very practical skills such as curiosity, connections and creating value. The lack of these fundamentals of the entrepreneurial mindset puts chemical engineers at a disadvantage in today's workplace. The faculty at Villanova University have made the effort to focus on EML (entrepreneurial minded learning) by creating modules that can be implemented in already existing courses. These modules all vary in time, scale, and application, but have the same goal: to introduce chemical engineers to the entrepreneurial mindset. This paper will review in depth three different modules created and presented to students. The projects vary from elective courses (intro to biotechnology and polymer science) to required courses (heat transfer operations and process design). The projects included an attempt to explore a contrarian viewpoint by evaluating "bad" plastics, design of a shower without electricity and the design of a heat exchanger for commercial scale brewery. The projects were all evaluated using student surveys and post implementation reflection by the faculty. The authors believe these same modules can be implemented in similar classes at other institutions with equal success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A multi-stage consultative process has been developed within the College of Engineering at New Mexico State University for integration within the college's maker space as a means of promoting technology acceleration and entrepreneurship among capstone projects. The developed process exposes students to advanced resources within the maker space environment by enhancing the capstone experience. This process has broadened student perspectives of capstone projects beyond a purely academic requirement to one that fosters innovation and possibly entrepreneurial opportunities. The developed model utilizes the interdisciplinary environment of a maker space to enhance project quality through an iterative design process, validation, and continuous testing, while introducing students to campus resources for entrepreneurship. As a work-in-progress, this paper will convey the process adopted to identify and guide capstone teams through the engineering design process, discusses preliminary results during the spring academic semester to increase capstone use of the maker space, outcomes to accelerate technology, and planned next steps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The number of institutions offering entrepreneurship courses and programs has grown dramatically over the last decade. Many of these programmatic offerings have been driven by the passion of individual faculty champions. Unfortunately, the programming often remains the responsibility of that founding faculty champion. In such cases, if the faculty champion leaves, the entrepreneurship programming declines or may be completely lost. VentureWell, a not-for-profit that supports STEM innovators and entrepreneurs, has utilized its Faculty Grants Program to provide seed funding to faculty champions to create courses and programs that enhance student development of skills and knowledge associated with innovation and entrepreneurship. To foster lasting impact, the program sets the expectation that meritorious educational innovations will continue after funding ends. While this has occurred in most cases (over the last 5 years 72% of grantees' claim activities have continued, expanded or been institutionalized), continuation of the program typically remains the responsibility of the founding faculty members, an indicator that institutionalization is not yet complete. Research on propagation and institutionalization of educational innovations has suggested that an institutionalization plan should be constructed in three phases: (i) describe the gap between the current situation and the desired future situation, (ii) prepare a plan for bridging the gap, and (iii) prepare a plan for monitoring progress toward bridging the gap. This paper describes how VentureWell is integrating this three-phase approach to institutionalization, Designing for Institutionalization (DI), into its Faculty Grants program. The DI approach is an adaptation of the three-phase Designing for Sustained Adoption Framework, which supports educational developers to increase the percentage of educational innovations that are propagated beyond the original developers. Case studies of institutionalization efforts provide lessons that could be applied by others interested in institutionalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conversations regarding outcome assessment naturally precipitate as the entrepreneurship curriculum matures from certificates and minors to undergraduate and graduate degree programs. In general, the assessment conversation begins with a discussion and comparison of entrepreneurial skills versus entrepreneurial mindset. The assessment of skills, such as the ability to discern information from a balance sheet or the ability to create a robust business model, is a more straightforward endeavor than documenting a temporal change in mindset. Questions such as, "Have we changed how a student thinks about risk?" or "Have we affected a student's perception on the feasibility of becoming an entrepreneur?" are more difficult to answer than skills assessment from a metrics-based perspective. However, progress is evident in the development of tools to document entrepreneurial mindset and hence through longitudinal studies measure the potential impact of curriculum and co-curricular activities on changing mindset. This paper compares and contrasts two relatively new tools for assessment of entrepreneurial mindset: (1) Entrepreneurial Mindset Profile (EMP), which has origins back to 2010 at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida, and (2) Entrepreneurial Profile 10 Index (EP10), by Gallup with underpinnings in 2009. Both are web-based surveys. For this research, 70 undergraduate students majoring in math, science, or engineering completed both instruments. Forty students were enrolled in an Introduction to Entrepreneurship course, with the remainder enrolled in an Introduction to Engineering Management course. The instruments are first compared based on the authors' perspective of practical mechanics, such as ease of administration, the time required for completion, instructions to students, formatting of questions, and access to results to name a few. Additionally, the research presents a correlation study of results for the same students taking both instruments. In addition, students who participated in the research were surveyed to gain insight into their experience when completing the instruments, such as time allotted, clarity of questions, and understanding of results. Finally, students were asked to express their judgment on the perceived value of these instruments to provide useful knowledge about their entrepreneurial mindset. The results of this research are particularly relevant to faculty and administration interested in measuring changes in entrepreneurial mindset by adopting a commercially available assessment instrument or by developing an in-house instrument. Faculty interested in the concept of the entrepreneurial mindset, whether they use the EMP, EP10 or some other psychometric instrument as a classroom activity or assessment are a secondary audience for results presented herein. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ability to innovate is essential in the rapidly evolving technological landscape. Many efforts have been made in engineering education to support student innovation (e.g., innovation and entrepreneurship programs and targeted courses). Yet, research on how engineering students approach and experience innovation has been limited. In this CAREER project we conducted a series of empirical studies using interviews, think-aloud protocols, and surveys to examine engineering students' innovation skills, views of the innovation process, and experiences that supporedt their development of innovative competencies. Informed by these studies, as well as the broader body of literature, we developed a framework for engineering student innovation that can guide instructional practices to support student innovation. In this paper, we present this framework with supporting evidence from recent and ongoing studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditionally first year engineering programs focus on fundamental engineering skills and introduce students to the engineering design process. More recently using the KEEN (Kern Entrepreneurial Engineering Network) philosophy there is momentum to push engineering education further by fostering an entrepreneurial mindset in young engineers. At Western New England University the first year engineering program has been revamped using a combination of elements including entrepreneurially minded learning (EML), Problem Based Learning (PBL), Active Collaborative Learning (ACL) and a design framework based on the "living with the lab" program developed at Louisiana Tech University. The First Year Engineering program at Western New England University spans four common courses for all engineering majors. This work focuses on two courses, the Introduction to Engineering course, a four credit course offered in the first semester and the Data Acquisition and Processing course, a three credit course offered in the second semester. The framework behind the Introduction to Engineering course is a series four challenges based off of an Arduino robot platform. Including this platform with other basic engineering tools like solid modelling (SolidWorks), traditional skills such as computer aided design (CAD), basic programming, teaming, basic statistics, innovation, the engineering design process, technical writing and oral communications are taught using both ACL and PBL techniques. A degree of EML is presented in this course through artificial budget requirements that are built into the projects. During the second semester of a students' first year students are guided further in EML concepts in the Data Acquisition and Processing course. In this course a smart design project forms the basis of the EML experience which includes such skills as seeking opportunities using brainstorming, accessing market interest, accessing technical feasibility, designing for manufacturability, and providing a cost analysis of an eventual finalized product. The entrepreneurial impact of this comprehensive program is assessed through surveys which gage the students' awareness of EML concepts. This paper will present an overview of the ACL, PBL and EML techniques used in the First Year Engineering Program at Western New England University. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we demonstrate preliminary determinations that a person's comfort zone, as measured on a newly developed CZone Scale, has significant correlation with their potential as an entrepreneur or innovator. "Comfort Zone" is a behavioral state within which a person operates in an anxiety-neutral condition, using a limited set of behaviors to deliver a steady level of performance, usually without a sense of risk (White 2008). Our preliminary data, based on approximately 1000 samples, shows that the potential of an entrepreneur or innovator is much more correlated with higher tolerance for uncertainty than it is with field of study. We also find that this critical indicator of entrepreneurial potential is linked with the ability to learn and grow professionally, and that comfort with uncertainty is even an indicator of a person's perception of overall career satisfaction and personal happiness. We also find two particularly interesting characteristics; firstly, that comfort with uncertainty in professional decisions does not have to be the same as comfort with uncertainty in personal situations, and secondly, that a person's comfort with uncertainty can change in both directions over the course of his or her life and career. In fact, entrepreneurs tend to increase their comfort with uncertainty over their career, which is not true of non-entrepreneurs. Our findings have implications on how entrepreneurship is taught, on how to test for entrepreneurial and innovation potential, and even what types of individual-level behaviors are most critical to increase the innovation culture of an organization. Our study supports a position that not only can students and employees be screened for these fundamental characteristics, but also that this ability can be developed, grown, and reinforced. This study further reinforces a hypothesis that seminal entrepreneurship and innovation skills can actually be learned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Creativity, innovation, the ability to identify a customer need, and using creative problem solving to develop new ventures/products/solutions are vital skills for entrepreneurship. These are also some of the most highly sought skills by employers of engineering graduates. Thus many engineering colleges are incorporating innovation and creativity into the engineering curriculum, but often the topics are delivered piecemeal over multiple courses, losing focus and continuity. Therefore, Lawrence Technological University in collaboration with The Henry Ford (a nationally renowned cultural, historical, and educational destination in Dearborn, Michigan) developed and administered a week-long summer enrichment program (i.e., summer camp) for undergraduate engineering students focused on progressively building from the foundations of the creative process/competencies to the application of innovative techniques coupled with engineering design and problem solving. The program was available to students of multiple engineering disciplines from across the U.S. Throughout the week, the students explored the core competencies of creativity and innovation through activities and games, and they studied and implemented various methods of creative problem solving through teamwork on various problems and product development projects/tasks. To further emphasize innovation (and its relation to American history), two of the five weekdays were spent visiting The Henry Ford which includes the Henry Ford Museum, Greenfield Village, a Ford F-150 truck assembly plant, and the Benson Ford Research Center where they participated in a college-level version of The Henry Ford's Innovation 101 curriculum. This paper will explain the objectives and format of the program, summarize the benefits of collaborating with a local cultural institution, explain how this program can be transferable to other universities, discuss sustainability of a multi-college summer immersive experience, and present assessment results compiled from three separate camp offerings over three summers. Three unique assessments were performed. The first assessment was a pre- and post-camp survey conducted to determine the students' general perceptions of creativity, problem solving, teamwork, leadership, the role of creativity in engineering, and their personal view on their own creativity. A comparison of the pre- and post-camp surveys yields a positive shift in student perceptions. The second assessment was a survey administered to the students at the conclusion of the week to measure student perceptions of the effectiveness of the program, the delivery techniques, and the format. Based on this student input, these assessment results allowed for the program to be optimized between summers and in fact yielded increasingly positive results from year-to-year. The third assessment was specifically focused on the visit to the cultural institution. The results helped to streamline the connection between the curricula of the University and the cultural institution as well as strengthen the connection between the tour sites and the entire week's curriculum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Integrating entrepreneurial thinking into engineering education is a growing area of interest. Existing programs have created content for courses offered during the normal semester where traditional modes of assessment, such as grading, have been used to evaluate learning. Within this research the authors explore another style of offering entrepreneurship and design within engineering education. The authors present their findings and experience in offering designbased immersive learning experiences that are outside of the traditional classroom setting. This paper evaluates whether students involved in the designbased immersive learning experiences developed knowledge pertaining to design and entrepreneurship as evidenced through comparative analysis of student reflections and authoritative literature in the subject area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of the Engineering Pathways to Innovation Center (Epicenter), an NSF-funded partnership between Stanford University and the National Collegiate Inventors & Innovators Alliance (NCIIA), is to enable engineering programs at institutions across the U.S. to develop effective and accessible innovation and entrepreneurship offerings for undergraduate engineering students. To achieve this goal, Epicenter staff members are creating the multi-year, team-based Pathways to Innovation program to support institutional change and faculty development by embedding entrepreneurship and innovation education into formal and informal undergraduate engineering curriculums in higher education. During the summer of 2013, Epicenter engaged Broad-based Knowledge, LLC to conduct an independent literature review to identify promising models and practices that could guide the design and implementation of the Pathways program, specifically on the topics of faculty development and change in higher education. Since then, Epicenter staff members have incorporated the recommendations from the literature review into the design of the Pathways program, which plans to launch in January 2014. This paper reports findings and recommendations from the literature review, synthesizes the recommendations with design decisions, and provides examples of how the decisions have been realized in components of the Pathways program. Finally, the conclusion offers reflections on the design process from Epicenter staff members as they balance implementing the (sometimes overwhelming number of) promising practices from the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The proliferation of entrepreneurship degree programs, centers, and on-campus programs implicitly signal that a variety of stakeholders are involved in advancing these efforts. Among these stakeholders are the deans of engineering colleges since they are primary agents for leading change efforts throughout an institutional context. To date, little literature has explored their perspectives on the value of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial thinking within engineering. In this study, we present the results of conducting interviews with 23 deans of engineering colleges representing three types of institutions: R1 Public (8), R1/R2 Private (5), and primarily undergraduate-focused (10). During the 30-minute interviews, deans discussed how they onboard and support junior faculty, and the role of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial thinking in engineering colleges. A thematic analysis of their responses revealed that, overall, engineering deans believe an entrepreneurial mindset can support both students and faculty and expressed their desire to continue scaling their institutions' entrepreneurship initiatives. The findings indicate that deans value entrepreneurial mindset because of its potential to enhance many of the activities that occur within an institutional context. The findings of this study add to the body of literature on this topic by documenting the perspectives of critical change agents connected to this topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article argues for a broad definition of entrepreneurship programs that encompasses a wide range of outcomes and pedagogies. It proposes a framework for categorizing entrepreneurship education programs to create a common language among researchers, administrators, and engineering students. It states that with these categorizations, entrepreneurship programs can identify their intended outcomes and align them with the needs, experience levels, and career intentions of their students.

Giving students the ability to be entrepreneurial leaders is a potentially valuable outcome for an engineering program. Entrepreneurial leadership consists of communication, teamwork, and problem solving skills that are important to careers in STEM fields, including engineering. For engineering, in particular, entrepreneurship and leadership skills relate directly to accreditation outcomes that every undergraduate engineering program must address. In this study, we describe the assessment of a three day leadership academy program at a small, technical school in the Midwestern United States. Activities in the academy consisted of seminars on leadership styles and communication comingled with problem solving and teamwork activities in which students were asked to analyze and apply the ideas they had learned. This academy is part of a grant from the Kern Entrepreneurial Engineering Network, and activities were tailored to address specific outcomes from that grant. Multiple forms of data were collected to assess the student experience at this leadership academy. To assess the application of ideas from seminars during activities, program facilitators, consisting of faculty and attendees of previous iterations of the academy, were asked to fill out open-ended assessment forms. These forms were designed to highlight ideas that students were implementing well, and areas that were in need of improvement. Additionally, pre and post surveys were administered to all program participants, measuring entrepreneurial mindset and student perceptions of program outcomes. Finally, voluntary semistructured interviews were conducted after the leadership academy concluded. These interviews addressed outcomes that were not covered by surveys and facilitator comments, and provided further insight into how students perceived the academy. Our analysis of results shows that academy activities positively influence student skills in teamwork, communication and problem solving. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many Electrical and Computer Engineering students at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte showed an interest in entrepreneurship when interviewed during their senior exit interview. Several students highlighted the existence of a taste of innovation in our capstone senior design classes (SDI and SDII) and elaborated on the mechanism of entrepreneurship in our Professional Practice course, but they all agreed that the department was missing a dedicated course on innovation and entrepreneurship. This information encouraged us to conduct a survey to assess the true level of intensity. Two faculty from the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department interviewed students from the most recently completed Senior Design capstone course sequence to assess their perspectives on innovation and entrepreneurship. The faculty evaluated students ideas, compared the data from students who participated solely in industry supported projects versus students who worked on faculty sponsored projects. They analyzed this feedback and used it in the development of a new course for the benefit of future students. The survey was taken by thirty seven students; twenty two of them worked on an industry sponsored project, while fifteen students worked on faculty sponsored Senior Design projects. All thirty seven students were asked a specific set of questions geared toward identifying students' knowledge in identifying new business concepts, identifying opportunity, analyzing the market for a new venture; and determining the sales and market strategy for a product. The results of the survey indicated the need for the students to learn about new venture opportunities, business concepts and strategies, and funding sources. The students also wanted to learn how to search for grant money from different sources. All these methods were incorporated into a new course "Technology Innovation and Entrepreneurship" for Engineering students that was offered in our department for the first time in the spring 2013 semester. This course consisted of a mixture of graduate and undergraduate multidisciplinary students working on five projects; each project was unique, formed out of student or faculty ideas. Three out of the five teams projects continued working on the assigned project during their capstone senior design courses for the fall 2013-spring 2014 with a strong plan for commercialization of their product. These students were motivated, self-driven and excited about their projects and the possibility of launching a business successfully by using our program, and taking advantage of the resources available to them from our University's Office of Technology Transfer. While this course gives a chance for our students to work with a faculty on the development of a new product, it will build a foundation for our engineering students to pursue a certificate in Innovation and Entrepreneurship at our Business school, if they wish. This course helped students identify opportunities to implement all ideas; helped the individual managed business growth, and provided methods of using critical thinking. This course was designed to be valuable for engineering students who plan to embark on the process of innovation and entrepreneurship while practicing engineering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is to examine characteristics of incoming engineering students as possible predictors of later participation in entrepreneurial activities. Four characteristics were examined: 1) locomotion, 2) self-evaluation, 3) creative self-efficacy and 4) having a close relative who is an entrepreneur. In September of 2013, a survey was sent to first-year engineering students at a large mid-Atlantic university as part of a larger longitudinal study. A total of 817 students completed the survey with a response rate of 29.1%. The students completed a battery of scales including the creative self-efficacy scale,1 the locomotion scale, and the assessment scale.2 At the end of the survey, students were asked whether or not they had yet considered pursing a minor in the engineering entrepreneurship minor located at the university. At the end of the survey, students were also asked whether or not they had a close family member who was an entrepreneur and a series of questions concerning their perceptions of entrepreneurship as a career path. This study examined the following hypotheses: 1) Engineering students who intend to minor in entrepreneurship have higher scores on locomotion and creative-self efficacy and lower scores on assessment. These students will also have more positive perceptions of entrepreneurship as a possible career path. 2) More positive views of entrepreneurship as a career will be positively associated with higher scores on locomotion and creative self-efficacy and lower scores on assessment. 3) Students with a close family member who is an entrepreneur will be more likely to intend to minor in engineering entrepreneurship and have more positive perceptions of entrepreneurship as a career. The results suggest that students who are considered "go-getters" and see themselves as being creative individuals are both likely to know about the entrepreneurship minor early in their academic careers and to aspire to pursue the minor. Students with high locomotion high creative self-efficacy scores also had more positive views of entrepreneurship as a career. Having a close family member who is an entrepreneur was also a positive predictor of a positive view of entrepreneurship as a career [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, two groups of people, instructors who taught entrepreneurial focused classes (N = 46) and students enrolled in entrepreneurial classes (N = 138) were asked to define entrepreneurship. The responses were coded into general categories and the categories were compared across groups. Student responses were also analyzed based on several other demographic variables including gender, relationship to entrepreneurial parents, prior entrepreneurial experiences, and major. Results highlight some of the different perceptions and goals that students and faculty hold regarding entrepreneurship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic trends and a changing job market for college graduates have generated significant interest in graduating more engineers who possess entrepreneurship skills and an entrepreneurial mindset. This has led to significant growth in the delivery of entrepreneurship courses to engineering students; however, research shows that such courses are typically part of minors and certificates, and not part of core engineering curriculum. The Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) establishes criteria for accrediting engineering programs and is a significant force in shaping the undergraduate curriculum. We propose that a more clear and concrete demonstration of the alignment of entrepreneurship education outcomes and ABET Criterion 3a-k, which involve both technical and non-technical skills, would catalyze the integration of the entrepreneurial skills and knowledge into engineering courses. Furthermore, direct assessment of entrepreneurial outcomes could aid in improving the mechanisms of achieving both ABET accreditation and the development of an entrepreneurial mindset among engineering students. [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]