Work in progress: Integrating entrepreneurial mindset within undergraduate engineering course projects

Entrepreneurial mindset is important for maintaining a competitive edge in this dynamic and changing engineering world. The Kern Family Foundation through its Kern Entrepreneurial Engineering Network (KEEN) has made it its mission to equip engineers with an entrepreneurial mindset with the hope that this will contribute to business and technological success of the future U.S. workforce. This paper describes a work-in-progress intervention where the KEEN 3Cs of entrepreneurially minded learning (curiosity, connections, and creating value) were introduced into a 'Principles of MechE for ECE majors' course. In this course electrical engineering students learn about the basic principles of mechanical engineering. In an effort to understand how students view the 3Cs, the students are asked to select a specific project which could be a new or a previous project from a different course. Through their project the students will highlight the following • Curiosity - Engineering Curiosity: The technological need for the product or solution. Technical description of integration of the related technologies for developing the product or the solution. The technological evolution or future of the solution. - Business Curiosity: The market gap for a new product or solution. Causal factors and economic driving forces that point towards such a need. • Connections - Engineering Connections: Connections between the knowledge they have acquired in their various engineering courses and how they managed to draw upon those ideas and information with the current project. - Business Connections: The professional connections that they established and how it all played in, in this particular project. Also if they were able to make a connection to the marketability of their ideas and how structured this idea was. • Creating Value - Engineering Value: What was the technological value invested and earned by this product or solution. - Business Value: What was the economic value invested and earned by this product or solution. The paper will document the experiences of implementing the above mentioned work in progress. Assessment criteria developed to measure the success of this effort will also be discussed such as the grading rubric. While this activity was integrated into a Mechanical Engineering course for ECE students, it could in principle be adapted to a wide variety of engineering courses at other universities.