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Measuring the Impact of Entrepreneurship Across the Curriculum

Abstract

No longer limited to business majors1, interest in entrepreneurship now crosses many disciplines in universities. This is certainly the case in engineering programs, as society increasingly looks to small and medium sized firms for economic and employment growth. Engineering school interest is evident in a growing numbers of conferences, journals and funded projects. Engineering curricula are crowded, however, and leave little room for new courses. Beginning with the “writing across the curriculum” movement in the 1980’s, the literature reveals that many disciplines have mounted “across the curriculum” movements. These include writing, mathematics, critical thinking, citizenship, ethics and other fields. Given crowded engineering curricula, an “across the curriculum” approach is a logical means to address the need to add entrepreneurial thinking without adding additional courses.

Measurement tools are a critical requirement to assess the efficacy or any curriculum intervention. This is especially true when dealing with a new and somewhat amorphous concept such as entrepreneurial thinking and mindset. In this paper, the authors describe Kettering University’s efforts to measure faculty and student attitudes as we seek to infuse entrepreneurship across the curriculum. The paper discusses three specific measurement efforts. Our early efforts were formative and focused on student entrepreneurial mindset among engineering students studying entrepreneurship in a single course. Here we used measures of self-efficacy and locus of control as predictors of intention to start a business 2 3 4. Our second (and current) efforts focus on a pilot project designed to motivate faculty to alter their courses to include one or more of eleven attributes generally accepted as core to entrepreneurial thinking and behavior5. Here we measured (both before and after participating in an eight week workshop) faculty member’s (n=34) self-reported ability, willingness and perceived necessity of addressing eleven key attributes of entrepreneurial thinking 5 and behavior. We also measure student reactions to the resulting faculty initiatives in specific courses. Third, we address an upcoming summative effort to collect data on student entrepreneurial attitudes at the freshmen and senior level. The authors present empirical results from these efforts and discuss implications for further efforts in building entrepreneurship across the curriculum.

Authors’ Note: The authors wish to acknowledge generous support for this research from the Kern Family Foundation

Introduction

No longer limited to business majors1, interest in entrepreneurship now crosses many disciplines in universities. Interest in entrepreneurship and innovation among engineering degree programs is rapidly growing for a number of reasons. First, from a demand perspective, students

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Borchers, A., & Park, S. H., & Harris, M., & Riffe, W., & Tavakoli, M. (2010, June), Measuring The Impact Of Entrepreneurship Across The Curriculum Paper presented at 2010 Annual Conference & Exposition, Louisville, Kentucky. 10.18260/1-2--16436