2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Work in Progress: Gap Analysis for Assessment of Entrepreneurial Mindset in Engineering

Presented at Entrepreneurship & Engineering Innovation Division (ENT) Technical Session 2: Assessing the Entrepreneurial Mindset, Curiosity, and Workplace Preparedness

The efforts to incorporate an Entrepreneurial Mindset (EM) in engineering have grown significantly in recent years. The purpose of this work-in-progress research is to determine what tools and methods are currently used to assess EM, and what gaps exist in the current practice. To determine the current practices we performed a comprehensive literature review, an assessment review of cards on Engineering Unleashed, and a series of faculty interviews. To determine the gaps in the current assessment tools, we reviewed the results from each of the data sets and conducted additional industry interviews. Our team has now reviewed more than 2,000 unique data assets for possible inclusion in an assessment database. Around 300 of the reviewed tools represent EM assessment tools that could be adapted for use by other researchers.

Our preliminary findings indicate that most faculty and programs are currently using student surveys to assess EM. Most methods in practice are indirect, with a few exceptions like EM concept mapping. We have developed a database of methods for review by faculty to determine tools that may be helpful for them in practice. The largest gaps we identified included faculty-focused assessment tools and direct measures for students. Our future work includes development of new assessment tools to address these gaps in part.

Authors

Dr. Heather Dillon http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4467-2306 University of Washington [biography]

Dr. Heather Dillon is Professor and Chair of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Washington Tacoma. Her research team is working on energy efficiency, renewable energy, fundamental heat transfer, and engineering education. Before joining academia, she worked for the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) as a senior research engineer working on both energy efficiency and renewable energy systems, where she received the US Department of Energy Office of Science Outstanding Mentor Award.
Dr. Deborah M. Grzybowski The Ohio State University [biography]

Dr. Deborah M. Grzybowski is Asst. Dean of Teaching and Learning and Professor of Practice in the College of Engineering at The Ohio State University. She has been involved with developing and assessing curriculum for nearly 20 years. Her research focuses on making engineering accessible to all.
Dr. Bryant Hutson University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Dr. Megan Morin North Carolina State University at Raleigh [biography]

Megan Morin (she/her) graduated from the University of Dayton with a bachelor's degree in Middle Childhood Education and completed her Master's and Ph.D. at NC State in Engineering and Technology Education. Megan’s research interests in faculty development, pedagogies, assessment, and teaching developed because of her previous work with NC State Education and Workforce Programs and as a North Carolina middle school teacher. Dr. Morin will start as the Associate Director for Engineering Faculty Advancement in June 2023.
Dr. Nicole Ralston [biography]

Dr. Nicole Ralston is an Assistant Professor and co-Director of the Multnomah County Partnership for Education Research (MCPER) in the School of Education at the University of Portland in Portland, Oregon. She received her Ph.D. in Educational Psychology
Dr. Michael J. Rust Western New England University [biography]

Michael J. Rust received his B.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, in 2003 and 2009, respectively. During his undergraduate training, he worked for Ethicon Endo-Surgery and AtriCure, companies which specialize in the development of novel surgical devices. While completing his doctoral dissertation, Dr. Rust served as an NSF GK-12 Graduate Fellow, which allowed him to develop hands-on engineering activities for high school students. In 2009, he joined the faculty of Western New England University where he currently holds the position of Professor of Biomedical Engineering. He currently teaches undergraduate courses in bioinstrumentation, physiology, lab on a chip, and global health. Dr. Rust's research interests involve the development of point-of-care medical technologies, including bioinstrumentation for use in low-resource settings.
Viji Sathy University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Prof. Ben Tribelhorn University of Portland [biography]

Ben Tribelhorn teaches Computer Science at the University of Portland. His research includes machine learning for chaos in Lorenz systems, dynamic obstacle avoidance algorithms for unmanned aerial vehicles, improving software engineering pedagogy, and et
Dr. Timothy A. Doughty University of Portland [biography]

Dr. Timothy A. Doughty received his BS and MS from Washington State University in Mechanical and Materials Engineering and his Ph. D. from Purdue University. He has taught at Purdue, Smith College, and is now an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineer

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