2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The demands for professionals who are capable of navigating complex sustainable problems are increasing in construction industry. Although many construction programs have initiated integrating sustainability in their curriculum, entrepreneurship often receives limited attention, limiting students’ ability to apply sustainable principles into practical solutions. The reason is that sustainable development and entrepreneurship are closely connected, with entrepreneurs recognized for developing creative solutions that advance the economy while generating beneficial social and environmental impacts This study investigates the synergies between the sustainable development and entrepreneurial leadership mindsets through a pedagogical strategy that is on the basic of the Kern Entrepreneurial Engineering Network (KEEN) 3Cs framework, including Curiosity, Connections, and Creating Value. The proposed strategy was implemented as a 10-week term project within an undergraduate Construction Sustainability course. Students were tasked to design LEED-certified green communities that are composed of five infrastructure systems: landscape, transportation, water, energy, and solid waste. The project encouraged system thinking, stakeholder engagement, and community-centered decision-making while promoting entrepreneurial mindsets. A hybrid assessment method was adopted, including a sustainable design rubric, peer and self-assessment, course evaluations, and a post-course survey correspond to measuring entrepreneurial leadership mindset. The results of design rubric, with mean rubric scores above 6 on a 7-point scale, show strong student performance across environmental, social, and economic pillars of sustainability. Moreover, survey findings reveal meaningful gains in entrepreneurial leadership mindsets, particularly in students’ ability to make cross-disciplinary connections and create social and economic values. Qualitative feedback emphasizes increased engagement, improved understanding of sustainability as a multi-dimensional concept, and improved confidence in applying course knowledge to real-life scenarios and challenges. Despite being limited by a small sample size and implementation at a single institution, this project, being a pilot study, indicates that students improved their sustainability skills and entrepreneurial mindset by learning and using the synergies between entrepreneurial leadership and sustainability. The findings provide a practical and replicable teaching method for promoting sustainable and entrepreneurial education within construction management programs.