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2004_1612

Coupling Engineering and Entrepreneurship Education through Fuel Cell Product Development

Tze-Chi, Hsu and Bee-Shan, Han

Department of Mechanical Engineering, Yuan Ze University Taoyuan, Taiwan, R.O.C. metchsu@saturn.yzu.edu.tw

Abstract

This paper presents an overview of the entrepreneurship curriculum at Yuan Ze University. In this curriculum, thirteen courses are identified as required courses for students that intend to apply fuel cell as the key component for starting a new company. The thirteen courses include fuel cell design, fuel cell experiments, manufacturing process, mechatronics, international business and entrepreneurship. These courses are offered by different departments from the engineering and business schools. Students with different backgrounds are required to complete two to three courses in the curriculum depending on his/her interest. Upon completion, they are formed into several teams from different disciplines to work together as a virtual company in creating a new product that could be used to solicit funding for future commercial purposes. The final evaluation is then based on the feasibility of the business plan and the merits of the product.

Starting from February of 2003, 52 students joined this virtual company and 31 students fulfilled all the requirements at the end of September 2003. Two products were developed, a fuel cell scooter and fuel cell education kit. An important result from the curriculum was that both the engineering and business students developed an understanding of the technical and business challenges in starting a new company. This required development of effective cross-disciplinary communication skills and learning to function in a setting similar to one that might be found in industry.

I. Introduction

Yuan Ze University is a fully accredited private university offering standard “Proceedings of the 2004 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2004, American Society for Engineering"

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Tze Chi, H., & Bee Shan, H. (2004, June), Coupling Engineering And Entrepreneurship Education Through Fuel Cell Product Development Paper presented at 2004 Annual Conference, Salt Lake City, Utah. 10.18260/1-2--13114