2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Entrepreneurship education (EE) equips undergraduate engineering students with entrepreneurial skills, in addition to the technical skills they acquire through their engineering program. Traditionally, EE to engineering students is often provided through curricular and co-curricular settings, limiting student participation. With the increasing research in the field of entrepreneurship education for engineers, there is also a focus on incorporating EE courses into the engineering curriculum to ensure they are more available for undergraduate engineering students. This project, funded by the NSF IUSE HSI Program, aims to provide a platform for engineering students to develop entrepreneurial skills by developing entrepreneurial design modules that can be implemented in the existing curriculum.

First, semi-structured interviews were conducted to understand factors that affect students’ attitudes, identities, and motivations towards engineering. Data were collected by conducting semi-structured interviews with 16 first-year undergraduate engineering students. The findings reveal four themes that impact the students’ motivation, namely attention, relevance, confidence, and satisfaction. Second, the findings from the interviews informed the development of entrepreneurial design modules for an engineering graphics course offered at a minority serving institution in the United States. The modules introduced entrepreneurship tools, such as empathy maps, value proposition canvas, and stakeholder mapping. The modules were designed to provide examples, active learning exercises, and homework that required students to work with stakeholders in their community. The final projects involved students working in groups, focusing on identifying potential solutions to the problems they had identified based on their interaction with stakeholders. Student projects covered a wide array of topics, including but not limited to developing a mobility device for elderly people, a multipurpose cart for organizing space in organizations such as schools and offices, and a safety seat for vehicles.

To analyze the impact of the modules, a survey was administered at the beginning and end of the semester. Responses of the survey were used to analyze any statistically significant difference in students’ confidence in performing entrepreneurship and design tasks. Additionally, the project also focuses on the change in the students’ perception of the value of the engineering degree and self-perception of their identity as an engineer after experiencing the entrepreneurship modules. The preliminary assessment findings indicate a significant difference in the students’ entrepreneurial and design self-efficacy after attending the course. In contrast, there was no significant difference in the students’ confidence in their perception of the value of the engineering degree and self-perception of their identity as an engineer after attending the course. Additional qualitative data were collected, and they suggested a positive impact of using the entrepreneurial tools, group work, and engaging in the engineering design process.

Based on the results of the module implementation, the next phase will include incorporating modifications in the modules based on qualitative student feedback and will involve expanding the project by recruiting new faculty members to introduce the entrepreneurship modules to a larger group of first-year engineering students.