Doctoral Dissertation Research: When Two Worlds Collide: Examining the Influence of Academic Entrepreneurship on the Professional Obligations of Academics

学术创业是大学的教职员工和学生从事研究和创新想法商业化的手段。通过鼓励学术界成员参与创业，大学以新技术和发明的形式受益。经济效益既为制度实现，也为社会实现。虽然这些直接的经济贡献很重要，但这所大学在教育方面具有放大效应。通过培养学生的创新能力，该大学可以在学术墙内外创造一支更具创新精神的科学队伍。然而，这可能会以教师在教学、研究和服务中扮演的其他角色为代价。因此，本博士论文研究改进项目调查企业家精神与其他职业角色之间的关系。该项目考察了三所(分别)创业水平较低、中等和较高的公立大学。这些不同的体制背景使得能够调查体制环境对创业和教育的作用。通过调查教师对他们对学生的专业承诺的看法，这个项目揭示了教师的创业经历如何影响他们的课堂教学以及他们针对学生的教育目标。此外，该项目阐述了联邦资金和联邦项目在合法化和加强教师将他们的创业经验融入到他们的教学和学生指导中的努力方面的重要性。该项目将为制定关于学术创业的更好的机构政策和做法提供信息，以便在不损害各机构的核心教育和研究任务的情况下，最好地让教职员工和学生参与创新活动。本论文采用了质化的研究设计和现象学的访谈方法。该项目是在加利福尼亚州的一所公立大学系统进行的。所有参与的校区遵循相同的制度政策，但有不同的制度环境和创新方法。参与校园的特点是其参与创业的程度，这是通过剥离公司的数量以及专利和许可产生的总收入来衡量的。该项目招募教师是因为(1)他们参与了衍生公司，(2)他们在STEM领域的研究，以及(3)他们对本科生和研究生的教学。收集数据的方法有三种。首先，审查和审查关于教师参与创业活动的机构政策以及终身教职和晋升政策，以及大学及其创业中心的使命声明，以确定教师在其机构设置中的感知和创业动机。其次，对教职员工和学生进行访谈，探讨他们的创业经历和创业动机。第三，对每所大学创业中心的董事和工作人员进行采访，以确定教师面试的背景和范围。尽管教师访谈是主要的数据集，但传统的内容分析是在所有学生、教师和员工访谈中执行的。通过这样做，该项目旨在将教师的创业经验与他们的教学角色联系起来，并阐明教师的创业参与如何塑造和影响大学的创业教育议程。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Academic entrepreneurship is the means by which faculty and students at universities engage in the commercialization of research and innovative ideas. By encouraging members of the academic community to participate in entrepreneurship, the university benefits in the forms of new technologies and inventions. Economic benefits are realized both for the institution and for society. While these immediate economic contributions are important, the university has an amplifying effect in education. By training students in innovation, the university can create a more innovative scientific workforce, both within and outside the walls of academe. However, this may come at a cost to the other roles that faculty play--in teaching, research, and service. Therefore, this doctoral dissertation research improvement project investigates the relationship between entrepreneurship and these other professional roles. The project examines three public universities with (respectively) low, medium, and high levels of entrepreneurship. These differing institutional contexts allows for an investigation of the role of institutional environment on entrepreneurship and education. By examining faculty perceptions of their professional commitment to their students, this project sheds light on how faculty entrepreneurial experience shapes their classroom instruction and their educational goals aimed at their students. Furthermore, the project addresses the importance of federal funding and federal programs in legitimizing and reinforcing faculty efforts to integrate their entrepreneurial experience into their teaching and mentoring of students. This project will inform the creation of better institutional policies and practices on academic entrepreneurship that best engage faculty and students in innovative activities without compromising the core education and research missions of institutions. This dissertation project follows a qualitative research design with a phenomenological approach to interviews. The project is conducted at a public university system in California. All participating campuses follow the same institutional policies but have different institutional environments and approaches to innovation. Participating campuses are characterized by their levels of engagement in entrepreneurship, which is measured by the number of spin-off firms and the total income generated by patenting and licensing. Faculty are recruited for the project because of (1) their participation in spin-off firms, (2) their conduct of research in a STEM field, and (3) their teaching of undergraduate and graduate students. Three methods are used to collect data. First, institutional policies on faculty participation in entrepreneurial activities and policies for tenure and promotion, as well as mission statements of the university and their entrepreneurship centers, are reviewed and examined to contextualize faculty perceptions and entrepreneurial motivations in their institutional settings. Second, interviews are conducted with faculty and students to explore their experiences in entrepreneurship and their entrepreneurial motivations. Third, interviews with directors and staff at the entrepreneurship centers in each university are conducted to contextualize and triangulate faculty interviews. Although faculty interviews constitute the primary data set, conventional content analysis is performed in all student, faculty, and staff interviews. In doing so, this project aims to connect faculty entrepreneurial experience with their instructional roles and shed light on how faculty entrepreneurial engagement shapes and influences an entrepreneurship education agenda of the university.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.