Conference Session

Student Entrepreneurial Skills and Mindset II

Collection

2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Randall Brouwer, Calvin College; Aubrey Sykes, Calvin College; Steven H. VanderLeest, Calvin College

Tagged Divisions

Entrepreneurship & Engineering Innovation

CourseAbstractCapstone courses for senior engineering students may be organized in numerous ways. Usually,the goal is to give students a significant development and design experience that will preparethem well for their work following graduation. Sometimes the focus of a capstone course is onsolving technical problems of an advanced project. Sometimes the focus is on getting thestudents to produce a design based on the scope provided by an industry partner. Sometimes thefocus is on giving the students a rich experience in how a team works together. Sometimes thefocus is on the business side of projects and engineering. Sometimes the focus is on coveringmaterial that doesn’t fit in any of the other regular courses. Most capstone courses try to formsome balance

Conference Session

Entrepreneurship Courses and Outcomes I

Collection

2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Donald M Reimer, Lawrence Technological University; Ahad Ali, Lawrence Technological University; Sabah Razouk Abro, Lawrence Technological University

Tagged Divisions

Entrepreneurship & Engineering Innovation

include a patent search using the online service of United States PatentOffice. In a paper delivered at the 2010 ASEEE Annual Conference in Louisville, KY, the valueof understanding the patent search process and the entrepreneurial mindset was presented1. It wasfocused on senior capstone projects and the creation of entrepreneurial teams. Studentexperiences and outcomes were documented through individual interviews and assessment tools. Page 22.1235.2The constraints and challenges of developing a product, engineering it and preparing it formarket were presented. Real world entrepreneurial learning experiences are linked to eachstudent team as

Conference Session

Student Entrepreneurial Skills and Mindset I

Collection

2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Kenneth Reid, Ohio Northern University; Daniel Michael Ferguson, Purdue University, West Lafayette

Tagged Divisions

Entrepreneurship & Engineering Innovation

entrepreneurial skills.Mindset of student engineers are benchmarked at the beginning of the freshman year and thenagain at the end of the freshman year, soon after completion of a team based poverty alleviationfreshman capstone project. Two pre and post control samples of freshman engineer mindsets arebeing collected from similar sized engineering programs at comparable colleges in ourgeographic vicinity. Initial beginning-of-year testing results indicate a statistically significant tilttoward a fixed mindset in freshman engineering students compared to a growth mindset observedin an opportunity sample of freshman business students. We are tracking engineering studentsboth at the group and at the individual level, by major and by other statistically

Conference Session

Student Entrepreneurial Skills and Mindset II

Collection

2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Calvin C. Jen, Calvin College; Tyler Scott Helmus, Calvin College; Steven H. VanderLeest, Calvin College

Tagged Divisions

Entrepreneurship & Engineering Innovation

applicable principles and potentially similar motivations. Forexample, Muhammad Yunus started Grameen, the microfinance banking. The Peace Corps, as agovernment-sponsored program, provides opportunities for recent college graduates to engage insocial entrepreneurship projects on the ground level in many developing countries. Similarly, Page 22.1390.4non-governmental organizations (NGO's) are also developing creative and innovative solutionsto economic, health, housing and food issues in the United States and in many countries –solutions such as treadle pumps9 or an Engineers Without Borders water filter project10. Green11provides a helpful overview

Conference Session

Entrepreneurship Courses and Outcomes II

Collection

2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

William D. Schindel, ICTT System Sciences; Samuel N. Peffers, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology; James H. Hanson, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology; Jameel Ahmed, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology; William A. Kline, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology

Tagged Divisions

Entrepreneurship & Engineering Innovation

products businesses. Schindel earned the BS and MS in Mathematics.Samuel N. Peffers, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology Lieutenant Colonel Samuel Peffers is Professor of Military Science at the Rose-Hulman Institute of Tech- nology and a PhD student in Technology Management at Indiana State University.James H. Hanson, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology James Hanson is an Associate Professor of Civil Engineering at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology where he has been teaching since 2002. Among the courses he teaches is the capstone design course where he has begun to introduce training on innovation to complement the systems approach to design. He has received several teaching and paper awards including the ASEE