2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

In the United States, there has been a proliferation of high school-level curricula aimed at teaching entrepreneurship in concert with STEM content areas (Elert et al., 2015; Ghasemi et al., 2011). The primary goals of these curricula are to: strengthen entrepreneurial skills in students; connect entrepreneurship to STEM concepts and content areas in order to support interest in STEM areas of the workforce; connect students to industry leaders; and create a bridge between high school and either future employment or undergraduate university education. Likewise, there has been a proliferation of curriculum and programs at the university level to teach entrepreneurship to STEM students, in order to achieve similar goals (Fisher et al., 2008; Jones and Jones, 2014). While both high school and university level courses tend to aim at some of the same knowledge and skills, the curricula often do not speak to each other. This paper examines the bridge between high school and university curricula by examining the literature in this area, and then focusing on a specific case of connections between an entrepreneurship-focused high school and a university. The paper focuses on the challenges and opportunities of connecting curriculum and developing partnerships and pipelines between high school and university Engineering Entrepreneurship programs.