BOARD #150: WIP More than its parts: Insights from cultivating a multidisciplinary network for entrepreneurship and communication

Mark Blaine; Nathan Jacobs

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Conference: 2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Publication Date: June 22, 2025
Start Date: June 22, 2025
End Date: August 15, 2025
Conference Session: Entrepreneurship & Engineering Innovation Division (ENT) Poster Session
Tagged Division: Entrepreneurship & Engineering Innovation Division (ENT)
Page Count: 6
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/55970

Paper Authors

biography

Mark Blaine University of Oregon

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Mark Blaine is a professor of practice who works at the intersection of storytelling and science, producing stories, developing experiential courses, and training scientists with audience analysis, strategic communication, and storytelling tools. He also works with media researchers to translate their work to best practices in science communication for journalists and strategic communications teams.
At the Knight Campus, he has designed a novel, holistic approach to training scientists that seeks to strengthen the connection between scientific collaborators, innovators and entrepreneurs, and the public they serve.

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biography

Nathan Jacobs University of Oregon

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Nathan is the Senior Director for Academic and Impact Programming for the Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact at the University of Oregon. In this role, he leads the Impact Team, a multidisciplinary group of scholars and experts dedicated to integrating science communication, design thinking, and innovation and entrepreneurship skills into technical training programs. Nathan also spearheads the development and implementation of cutting-edge graduate and undergraduate programs for the Knight Campus and played a key role in launching the bioengineering PhD program and undergraduate minor, brewing innovation undergraduate minor, and UO’s undergraduate major in data science. Prior to joining the Knight Campus, Nathan earned his PhD in mechanical engineering and applied mechanics at the University of Pennsylvania, where he investigated the effects of ageing and degeneration on intervertebral disc biomechanics. Nathan earned his BS in bioengineering at the University of Utah.

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Abstract

This work in progress describes how a bioengineering program has reached beyond faculty in engineering and related sciences to incorporate expertise and coursework from a broader set of disciplines with a direct impact student success. Those interdisciplinary networks – particularly from business, communication, and the university library – enhance innovation and entrepreneurship education in graduate engineering programs. We present this from the perspective of a key representative of one of the non-engineering partner institutions, with a hope to provide insight for engineering program decisionmakers. The program described here is delivered through a series of courses, trainings, coaching, and experiential learning opportunities conducted through the bioengineering program’s facilities and directed by its faculty and administrators, but it relies on networks and programs developed and cultivated elsewhere in the university. In addition, those programmatic needs from bioengineering have helped shape course offerings in other parts of the university as students have sought outside expertise in developing broader expertise and insight into innovations based on basic and applied research. Based on principles of and shared interest in effective design and best practices in communication, the program we describe reframes graduate student education from the first week that students arrive on campus. The program builds on an immersive boot camp, our Impact Week, and then leads into a term-long course in science communication and design thinking. In the next term students have the option of taking a business course in innovation and entrepreneurship led by a senior faculty member in the business school. In their third term, students are required to take a basic scientific writing course that is team taught by a senior faculty member from the journalism school. In subsequent terms they then focus on grant writing and have the option to go deeper in business school curriculum with an area of concentration focused on innovation and entrepreneurship. As we have laid the groundwork of a formal course of study for bioengineering students in innovation and entrepreneurship, we find that students also engage faculty partners regularly for non-curricular-based opportunities, particularly around innovation, communication to underserved communities, and specific funding opportunities.

Citation
Format

Blaine, M., & Jacobs, N. (2025, June), BOARD #150: WIP More than its parts: Insights from cultivating a multidisciplinary network for entrepreneurship and communication Paper presented at 2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition , Montreal, Quebec, Canada . https://peer.asee.org/55970

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - This work in progress describes how a bioengineering program has reached beyond faculty in engineering and related sciences to incorporate expertise and coursework from a broader set of disciplines with a direct impact student success. Those interdisciplinary networks – particularly from business, communication, and the university library – enhance innovation and entrepreneurship education in graduate engineering programs.
We present this from the perspective of a key representative of one of the non-engineering partner institutions, with a hope to provide insight for engineering program decisionmakers. The program described here is delivered through a series of courses, trainings, coaching, and experiential learning opportunities conducted through the bioengineering program’s facilities and directed by its faculty and administrators, but it relies on networks and programs developed and cultivated elsewhere in the university. In addition, those programmatic needs from bioengineering have helped shape course offerings in other parts of the university as students have sought outside expertise in developing broader expertise and insight into innovations based on basic and applied research.
Based on principles of and shared interest in effective design and best practices in communication, the program we describe reframes graduate student education from the first week that students arrive on campus. The program builds on an immersive boot camp, our Impact Week, and then leads into a term-long course in science communication and design thinking. In the next term students have the option of taking a business course in innovation and entrepreneurship led by a senior faculty member in the business school. In their third term, students are required to take a basic scientific writing course that is team taught by a senior faculty member from the journalism school. In subsequent terms they then focus on grant writing and have the option to go deeper in business school curriculum with an area of concentration focused on innovation and entrepreneurship. 
As we have laid the groundwork of a formal course of study for bioengineering students in innovation and entrepreneurship, we find that students also engage faculty partners regularly for non-curricular-based opportunities, particularly around innovation, communication to underserved communities, and specific funding opportunities.

AU  - Mark Blaine
AU  - Nathan Jacobs
CY  - Montreal, Quebec, Canada 
DA  - 2025/06/22
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - BOARD #150: WIP More than its parts: Insights from cultivating a multidisciplinary network for entrepreneurship and communication
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/55970
ER  -