2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Entrepreneurship increasingly finds a place in engineering education. Focusing on mechanical and closely allied disciplines, this article reviews literature describing entrepreneurial concepts in engineering education. Conventional and newer search techniques identify relevant publications, and then, this work discusses the manifestations and prevalence of entrepreneurial concepts. It identifies motivations for including these concepts and discusses the potential for underlying drivers of their appearance. It further categorizes types of entrepreneurial activity that one encounters in the literature.

To identify both manifestations and prevalence of entrepreneurial concepts, the search method uses a mix of traditional academic databases and artificial intelligence (AI) tools to explore the engineering education literature. These tools find examples of manifestations from which one notes distinct terms such as entrepreneurial mindset (EM). The frequency of these key terms provides an indication of the prevalence of various manifestations.

Qualitative examination of examples of the identified manifestations leads to insights concerning the motivations behind inclusion of entrepreneurial concepts in mechanical engineering education. The work summarizes these motivations. Then, it discusses those motivations in the context of potential underlying drivers.

Finally, the work categorizes the major forms of entrepreneurial intervention in mechanical and closely related engineering curriculums. The extent of interventions (i.e. modules within courses vs. more extensive curricular incorporation) is noted. The article interrogates the notion that entrepreneurial curriculum elements take the form of business creation, innovation facilitation, or development of targeted mental habits.