Students learn fundamentals of engineering design while pursuing their own entrepreneurial ideas

Rowan University has a unique 8-semester Engineering Clinic sequence. This sequence helps develop professional skills identified in the ABET A-K criteria though project-based-learning. The specific role of the Sophomore Engineering Clinics is to provide an introduction to technical communication and engineering design principles. Design skills are further developed in discipline-specific capstone design experiences and in the Junior/Senior Engineering Clinics. For many years, open ended design projects varying in scope from 3 weeks to a full semester have been presented in the Sophomore Engineering Clinics. In recent years, two new entrepreneurial assignments were integrated into Sophomore Clinic: • Sophomore Clinic I (fall semester): A white paper assignment, in which students examinea product that doesn't currently exist but could foreseeably be developed in the near future, was added to Sophomore Clinic I. • Sophomore Clinic II (spring semester): An entrepreneurial project framework, in which students propose their own idea for an entrepreneurial project and try to convince classmates to join this project. Projects that attract enough interest are run as the design projects during the rest of the semester. A previous paper1 examined the role and impact of these new Sophomore Clinic assignments in Rowan's college-wide effort to foster entrepreneurship in students. The proposed paper will focus on how these projects proved to be an effective vehicle for meeting the primary pedagogical goals of Sophomore Engineering Clinic: teaching engineering design and technical communication. New assessment results quantifying student success on the entrepreneurial projects, both in terms of developing student interest at the beginning of the semester and in convincing faculty at the end of the semester that a project merits additional effort in the junior year, will also be presented.