Role and Assessment of Entrepreneurial Thinking in Undergraduate Engineering Education

Vincent (Vin) P. MannoProvost & Dean of FacultyProfessor of Engineering

129th NEASC Annual Meeting and ConferenceEntrepreneurial Thinking:

Its Role and Impact in Different Educational SettingsDecember 10, 2014

Boston, MA

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• National Academy of Engineering, Educating the Engineer of 2020 (2004)• D. Grasso, M. Brown-Burkins, Holistic Engineering Education: Beyond

Technology (Springer, 2010)

THE MISSING BASICS FOR THE 21st CENTURY:

• Teamwork, communication, creativity, leadership, entrepreneurialthinking, ethical reasoning, global contextual analysis

The Need for Change in Engineering Education

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Engineering Is Process Not ContentTime, Knowledge, Resources, Constraints, Societal Context

Why Not…?(Idea)

Let’s Try It!(Prototype)

Why Doesn’t it Work?(Test)

There Must be a Better Way!(Analysis)

Entrepreneurial Thinking is a mindset - one of the many cognitive skills on the engineer's virtual tool belt

along with analysis, design, domain knowledge, …

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• Undergraduate residential engineering education • Total enrollment of about 350 • 50% women• BS degrees in ECE, ME, Engr • 9-to-1 student/faculty ratio• Endowment > $1 million/student• Research expenditures > $1 million/yr• Partner with Babson College, Wellesley College

• No academic departments• No tenure• Low tuition• Everything has expiration date

Olin - Created to Explore New Models of Undergraduate Engineering Education

and Catalyze External Change

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Restructuring Engineering Education:A Critical Need for Rebalancing to Focus on Innovation

Feasibility Viability

Desirability

INNOVATION

Overemphasized inEngineering Education

Embed in theprograms and

culture

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Curricular ElementsProject-based courses – Requirements – Weave of Design and Entrepreneurship

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• Products and Markets – required for all first years Passion, relevance, marshal uncontrolled resources Multidisciplinary teaching team – academics, practitioners,

non-specialists (engineers, scientists, anthologists, ..) Agile scrum training promulgated to later courses

• Senior Year – Corporate-sponsored Design Projects(SCOPE) or Affordable Design and Entrepreneurship (Non-Profits, International)

• Entrepreneurship Electives plus Capstone Integrate content knowledge and experiences Building block for post-graduate move?

Nurturing Mindset Requires an EcosystemLearning Continuum, Partners, Local E! Community

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• It’s more than courses (remember process >> content)

• Leverage partnership with Babson – No. 1 Entrepreneurship college in the US, content experts, atmospherics, joint programs

• Olin IP policy – what students (and faculty) create is theirs(Remember who was nice to you.)

• Boston area – hotbed of activity – experts, I-labs, TechStars, etc.

Assessment:What Do We Measure? How Do We Measure?

Metrics – Desired Outcomes?

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Current – Quantitative• Direct entrepreneurial participation Post-graduate

employment in own start-up or someone else’s

• Class of 2014 already at 4% as of October 2014

2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 20130%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

E! Participation by Year of Graduation

6 months1 year5 years

Assessment:What Do We Measure? How Do We Measure?

Metrics – Desired Outcomes?

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Current – Qualitative

• Follow ‘stories’ of specific endeavors – integrate over time –some evidence suggestive of an innovation ecosystem

Olin College Startup Indico Announces Funding13 NOVEMBER 2014 - The team took the stage at Techstars Demo Day earlier this week and announced their $3M in funding.

Built by a group of Olin College undergrads, Technical Machine has $1M in Seed funding to help developers create next gen Internet-enabled hardware December 12, 2013 

Assessment:Future Plans, Explorations and Unknowns

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Future – More general assessment across all postgraduate population

• Likert-type questionsHow important is application of business and entrepreneurial concepts to your professional activities?

Unknowns• Will we be able to adequately track of career trajectories

• How to account for earlier (before college), later experiences-additive and non-linear effects?

• What results = success (= achieving learning outcomes)?

• Missing questions – not knowing what we don’t know??