2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Preparing engineers to become innovative problem solvers requires educational environments that blend technical rigor with entrepreneurial thinking, social awareness, and cross-disciplinary and cross-institutional collaboration. This paper presents the case study of how engineering education can integrate design and business aspects and to cultivate an entrepreneurial mindset among students, centered on the development of a modular, ADA-compliant wheelchair ramp system manufactured from recycled polymers. This project is a start-up venture that addresses both accessibility inequities and plastic waste diversion. Through the process of advancing the design from academic prototype to manufacturing readiness, the project evolved into an interdisciplinary collaboration between engineering and business, supported by partnerships across two universities, and for- and non-profit stakeholders.

Written jointly from the perspectives of educators and a student collaborator, this paper examines how experiential, cross-campus learning environments can foster both technical innovation and entrepreneurial agency. From the student perspective, the project functioned as a self-directed experiential co-op: a semester-long independent capstone project integrating materials research, supplier and manufacturer engagement, life-cycle assessments, and design-for-manufacturing and assembly. The process required managing technical complexity alongside stakeholder relations, such as working with nonprofit advisors, industry mentors, institutional partners, and other students to align engineering feasibility with market and social impact. This immersive experience fostered an entrepreneurial mindset through real-world decision-making, resource constraints, and systems thinking rarely achieved in conventional coursework.

From the educators’ perspective, this project allows faculty from both institutions to mentor students in a real-world scenario, exposing areas of expertise unique on each campus which in turn allow for the expansion of the faculty’s own expertise and future collaboration opportunities. This institutional collaboration enables sharing of resources in an experiential format that goes beyond a traditional coursework path. The project mimics the type of collaboration required on complex projects that require the coming together of industry experts, such as sustainability, entrepreneurship, and inclusive approaches in the creation of a final design. Additionally, this type of collaboration fosters opportunities for scholarly output, grant developments, and professional networking, which enrich the faculty roles on the participating schools. This type of experiential learning, demonstrates how a dynamic ecosystem can be created, where students and faculty co-create solutions with real-world relevance in an interdisciplinary framework.

Overall, this work illustrates how engineering education can work in design, entrepreneurship, and social innovation through experiential learning that benefits both students and faculty, while addressing broader societal needs. It offers an informal, adaptable model for integrating interdisciplinary collaboration, stakeholder management, and regional impact into the fabric of engineering education.