Asee peer logo

Instilling an Entrepreneurial Engineering Mindset through a Freshman Design Course

Download Paper |

Conference

2016 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

New Orleans, Louisiana

Publication Date

June 26, 2016

Start Date

June 26, 2016

End Date

June 29, 2016

ISBN

978-0-692-68565-5

ISSN

2153-5965

Conference Session

Entrepreneurship & Engineering Innovation Division Technical Session 5

Tagged Division

Entrepreneurship & Engineering Innovation

Page Count

10

DOI

10.18260/p.25738

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/25738

Download Count

620

Request a correction

Paper Authors

biography

Nassif E. Rayess University of Detroit Mercy

visit author page

Nassif Rayess is an associate professor at University of Detroit Mercy (UDM), He teaches design, innovation and entrepreneurship. He received his Ph.D. from Wayne State University and joined UDM in 2001.

visit author page

Download Paper |

Abstract

The course “Fundamentals of Engineering Design” was developed at ______________ in response to the need for introducing the entrepreneurial mindset to engineering students at a very early stage. The course is the second in a two-course freshman design sequence required of all undergraduate students in mechanical engineering, electrical engineering and robotic/mechatronic systems engineering. The course was developed and piloted in Winter 2014 (January-April). The course is centered on a recently developed commercial technology where the students are tasked with analyzing the system and associated intellectual property. They are then tasked with proposing ventures in other markets using said technology and to do so in business terms. The course is intended to train the engineering student to communicate with customers/end-users as well as management. Communicating with the former is done almost exclusively in terms of functions and value proposition. Communicating with management involves an ability to present ideas in economic terms as that plays a major role in decision making and engineers who are able to contribute to decision making have a distinct advantage in the professional world. The course is also intended to force the engineering student to think in terms of systems and not focus solely on particular technology details. The topics covered in the course are: opportunity recognition and value proposition; understanding intellectual property; ideation and concept generation; customer discovery; pro-forma financials; manufacturing considerations in product design; technology roadmapping; understanding return on investment; and, venture creation within and outside of corporations. This paper describes the course, projects and results as well as assessment and evaluation.

Rayess, N. E. (2016, June), Instilling an Entrepreneurial Engineering Mindset through a Freshman Design Course Paper presented at 2016 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, New Orleans, Louisiana. 10.18260/p.25738

ASEE holds the copyright on this document. It may be read by the public free of charge. Authors may archive their work on personal websites or in institutional repositories with the following citation: © 2016 American Society for Engineering Education. Other scholars may excerpt or quote from these materials with the same citation. When excerpting or quoting from Conference Proceedings, authors should, in addition to noting the ASEE copyright, list all the original authors and their institutions and name the host city of the conference. - Last updated April 1, 2015