Teaching Entrepreneurial Thinking Through a Companion Course for All Types of Capstone Senior Design Projects
- Conference
- Location
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Salt Lake City, Utah
- Publication Date
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June 23, 2018
- Start Date
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June 23, 2018
- End Date
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July 27, 2018
- Conference Session
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Entrepreneurship & Engineering Innovation Division Technical Session 6
- Tagged Division
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Entrepreneurship & Engineering Innovation
- Page Count
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16
- DOI
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10.18260/1-2--31049
- Permanent URL
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https://peer.asee.org/31049
- Download Count
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412
Paper Authors
Sandra Furnbach Clavijo P.E. Stevens Institute of Technology
Sandra Clavijo is the manager for the Innovation, Design and Entrepreneurship at Stevens (IDEAS) program in the School of Engineering & Sciences which coordinates the design and innovation spine, PROOF Lab and the Senior Design Expo. Sandra also teaches Senior Innovation and Introduction to Entrepreneurship Thinking. Before coming to Stevens, Sandra worked as a consulting engineer with Stantec and T&M Associates specializing in Urban Land Redevelopment and Municipal Engineering. Sandra holds a B.S. Degree in Civil & Environmental Engineering, an A. B. degree in Art History, and a Master of Engineering degree in Engineering Management from Stevens Institute of Technology. She also holds a Professional Engineering license in NJ.
Leslie R. Brunell Stevens Institute of Technology
Leslie Brunell, PhD, PE is a Teaching Professor at Stevens Institute of Technology. She coordinates both the civil and multidisciplinary engineering senior design projects. These projects are the culmination of the undergraduate engineering experience. Students design an innovative solution to a complex problem. She has recruited professional sponsors who mentor the civil engineering design projects. The projects expose the civil engineering students to real world design problems. The students gain first hand experience communicating professionally, developing schedules, meeting deadlines and preparing professional quality reports and presentations. Prof. Brunell is the director of the Water Resouces graduate program. She also teaches Fluid Mechanics, Surveying and Water Resources.
Keith G. Sheppard Stevens Institute of Technology
Dr. Keith G. Sheppard is Senior Advisor to the Dean in the Charles V. Schaefer, Jr. School of Engineering and Science and a professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science. His research interests have included electrochemical aspects of materials synthesis and environmental degradation of materials. His education in the U.K. included B.Sc. (University of Leeds) and Ph.D. (University of Birmingham) degrees in Metallurgy and a diploma in Industrial Administration (Aston University). He was the recipient of the Henry Morton Distinguished Teaching Professor Award in 2009. As Associate Dean, Prof. Sheppard had a leading role in the development of the undergraduate engineering curriculum at Stevens, including innovations in design education and initiatives to include entrepreneurship, sustainability, and global competency for undergraduate students.
Kishore V. Pochiraju Stevens Institute of Technology
Kishore Pochiraju is the Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education and a Professor in the Mechanical Engineering department at Stevens Institute of Technology. He recently served as the Founding Director of the Innovation, Design and Entrepreneurship Program at Stevens ( IDEaS) and prior to that, as the Director of the Design and Manufacturing Institute, a research center at Stevens. Prof. Pochiraju received his Ph.D. in 1993 from Drexel University and joined Stevens after working as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Delaware. His expertise spans product design, advanced manufacturing, materials insertion, and knowledge-based systems integration. His current externally-funded research is on the design of real-time lightweight robotic systems, high-temperature materials, and micro-/nano-scale devices. He is a member of ASME, ASEE and the American Society for Composites (ASC).
Abstract
Entrepreneurial thinking is recognized as important to the engineering curriculum; however, the typical entrepreneurship course is not applicable to all senior design projects, especially those from civil engineering. We recognized that product-based entrepreneurship courses need to be expanded and more flexible. Therefore, we have developed and implemented Senior Innovation, a companion course to senior design that focuses on entrepreneurial thinking in engineering design. Our main focus is to ensure students can communicate the value of their design - be it a product, service design, process design, or competition entrant - and develop and deliver an elevator pitch in our university-wide pitch competition.
Before we implemented Senior Innovation, certain disciplines, such as civil engineering, were left out of competing in our pitch competition, because they did not produce a physical product. Based on recent assessment data, we can conclude that 85 percent of engineering students, and 88 percent of civil engineering students, believe they can identify and communicate value through an elevator pitch after having taken Senior Innovation. This confirms that our course is valuable to all engineering disciplines and can be applied to all service design, process design, and competition entrants, as well as product-based senior design projects. This paper focuses on the creation of the companion course, Senior Innovation, and the learning objectives and methods used to teach entrepreneurial thinking, as well as assessment data and examples of how the course applies to non–product-based senior design projects.
Clavijo, S. F., & Brunell, L. R., & Sheppard, K. G., & Pochiraju, K. V. (2018, June), Teaching Entrepreneurial Thinking Through a Companion Course for All Types of Capstone Senior Design Projects Paper presented at 2018 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition , Salt Lake City, Utah. 10.18260/1-2--31049
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