2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Preparing engineering students to address sustainability challenges requires more than technical proficiency; it requires cultivating an entrepreneurial mindset (EM). The EM, characterized by curiosity, connections, and creating value, equips students to question assumptions, integrate diverse forms of knowledge, and design solutions that generate societal and economic impact. Embedding this mindset into design-based coursework allows students to practice not only solving technical problems but also framing them as opportunities for innovation and value creation. In this study, undergraduate students engaged in a sustainable housing design challenge using Aladdin, a cloud-based simulation platform for energy-efficient buildings. The task required designing a net-zero energy home for a hypothetical client in Indiana, under constraints of size, accessibility, curb appeal, and energy efficiency. Students submitted final house models and written reflections explaining how their designs achieved sustainability goals from the economic, environmental and social perspectives. We analyzed 25 reflections qualitatively using the KEEN 3Cs framework. The analysis revealed distinct patterns in how EM was expressed. Curiosity emerged when students confronted trade-offs in their design, leading them to probe constraints, test alternatives, and iterate. For example, conflicts between aesthetics and efficiency, or unexpected simulation outputs, prompted deeper questioning and exploration. Connections were the most consistent feature, with students linking energy-efficiency performance, size, solar orientation into coherent system-level rationales. Though most reasoning was linear, students demonstrated increasing ability to integrate across subsystems and contexts. Creating Value appeared when students explicitly considered stakeholder’s perspective alongside with theirs as an engineer, as well as communities, and the environment. Here, reflections addressed environmental stability based on their reliance on solar energy, insulation, and strategic design, situating technical choices within broader socio-technical systems. Findings suggest that constraint-driven, open-ended design activities can effectively surface all three dimensions of entrepreneurial thinking. By embedding simulation-based design challenges that spark curiosity, requiring system integration to highlight connections, and framing design tasks around real clients and communities to emphasize value creation. Educators can leverage simulation-based challenges to foster entrepreneurial mindset alongside technical learning. Future work should further operationalize EM assessment by pairing reflections with process data and exploring feedback mechanisms that guide students toward deeper connections and explicit value articulation.