2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Undergraduate Research as a Tool for Building Entrepreneurial Mindset in Engineering Students

Presented at Entrepreneurship & Engineering Innovation Division (ENT) Technical Session 6: Undergraduate and Faculty Research

Entrepreneurial Mindset (EM) has become a widespread classroom practice in many universities in recent years. Our research project is focused on how EM may be infused into undergraduate research experiences for engineering students. For several years, we have offered a workshop to help faculty develop methods to build EM into research practice. This includes research in traditional lab groups and also building course-based undergraduate research experiences (CURE) into the curriculum. After the workshop, participants join a year-long coaching process with a faculty mentor to develop and execute their projects with students.

In this paper, we report on the key elements of the workshop design and insights from past participants across multiple years. We surveyed all past participants of the workshops, and respondents indicated that they had received several benefits from the workshop experience including better planning and organization of research experiences for undergraduates. Faculty reported significant benefits to the students such as more attending graduate school but also to their own research practices including building a capacity for more readily identifying the value of their work.

We hope that future faculty interested in EM and undergraduate research will see the possibilities of bringing the two together in their work. We believe infusing an EM with undergraduate research in a variety of contexts will help our students continue to tackle the complex problems facing society.

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. Jenna P. Carpenter Campbell University [biography]

Dr. Carpenter is Founding Dean of Engineering at Campbell University. She is 2022-23 ASEE President and a co- recipient of the 2022 National Academy of Engineering Bernard M. Gordon Prize for Innovation in Engineering and Engineering Technology Education for her role as a co-founder of the Grand Challenges Scholars Program. Dr. Carpenter is an ABET PEV and member of the Executive Committee for the Global Engineering Deans Council and co-past chair for the Undergraduate Experience Committee of the Engineering Deans Council.
Dr. Rachel Louis Kajfez http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9745-1921 The Ohio State University [biography]

Dr. Rachel Louis Kajfez is an Associate Professor in the Department of Engineering Education at The Ohio State University. She earned her B.S. and M.S. degrees in Civil Engineering from Ohio State and earned her Ph.D. in Engineering Education from Virginia Tech. Her research interests focus on the intersection between motivation and identity, first-year engineering programs, mixed methods research, and innovative approaches to teaching. She is the principal investigator for the Research on Identity and Motivation in Engineering (RIME) Collaborative.
Dr. Brooke K. Mayer Marquette University
Dr. Shane W. Rogers Clarkson University
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

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Broadening Participation in Engineering and Engineering Technology
Faculty
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