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“Developing Collaborative Relationships for Education Relating to Invention, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship”

John A. Kleppe Electrical Engineering Department University of Nevada, Reno Reno, NV 89557-0153 kleppe@ee.unr.edu

Abstract

The Electrical Engineering Department (EE) at the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR) has since 1986 been teaching a special senior level Capstone class. This multidisciplinary class involves students from electrical and mechanical engineering, and students from the College of Business. The course teaches the fundamental principles of invention, innovation, and entrepreneurship. A version of the class has also been taught to groups of K-12 teachers who in most cases have carried the information they learned back into their respective classrooms. Even though the course has already been reported several times in the open literature, there still seems to be a growing interest in hearing about the success and failures that are characteristic of such a dynamic and changing topic.

This course necessitated the establishment of several collaborative relationships between the University Colleges of Engineering, Business, and Education, and with the Washoe County Public School System. Forming such collaborative relationships sounds like a great and simple idea, but in practice they can be very difficult to achieve. This paper describes in some detail the problems, roadblocks, and stumbling blocks encountered during the creation, operation, and assessment of the course. Issues such as scheduling conflicts, credit load differences, widely different backgrounds for the students, communications, and the general group dynamics must be addressed.

Discussion

There is a growing need to teach the fundamentals of invention, innovation, and entrepreneurship, as well as to develop new ways to produce more well trained and technically literate individuals in our society. Beyond educating students about invention, innovation, and entrepreneurship, educators must increase the innovative and entrepreneurial content in education by starting earlier in the education process. Whether or not entrepreneurship has a place in K-12 education, or even at the college level, is currently a topic of debate. Despite this

Proceedings of the 2004 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2004, American Society for Engineering Education

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Kleppe, J. (2004, June), Developing Collaborative Relationships For Education Related To Invention, Innovation And Entrepreneurship Paper presented at 2004 Annual Conference, Salt Lake City, Utah. 10.18260/1-2--13205