2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Engineering Technology graduates today face the challenge of mastering technical skills while also transforming innovative ideas into practical business solutions. The National Academy of Engineering highlights the importance of entrepreneurial skills for the 21st-century engineering profession. Recognizing this, there's a growing shift towards embedding entrepreneurial elements within engineering curricula to meet evolving industry demands. Despite efforts to infuse entrepreneurship into engineering education, its integration in Engineering Technology curricula specifically needs further attention. This gap highlights the need for enhancing entrepreneurship education in this field, considering the industry's demand for graduates who are both technically skilled and entrepreneurially minded. This research explores the integration of entrepreneurship into an Engineering Technology (ET) program, with a focus on a sustainable building course. It employs innovative educational strategies such as micro-moments, bisociation, virtual reality, entrepreneurial tasks, and a project-based approach to develop real-world problem-solving skills. The effectiveness of this approach was assessed through a quantitative and qualitative survey to understand student perceptions. Findings reveal students' heightened interest in innovation and entrepreneurship, improved business opportunity development skills, and an enhanced understanding of value proposition and market relevance. Quantitative data supported these insights, with a significant percentage of students reporting high satisfaction with the course's impact on their problem-solving and innovative capabilities. This curriculum enhancement contributes to job creation and economic growth across various sectors. By progressively integrating entrepreneurial thinking into their courses, ET faculty are pivotal in shaping engineers who are well-prepared to meet the complex challenges of the modern engineering landscape.