Investigating Entrepreneurship Education as a Means to Developing the 21st Century Engineer

这个项目在密歇根大学安阿伯工程学院将有助于确保工程师继续推动经济发展和创新的方法来衡量和评估本科工程专业学生的创业能力。持续创新是国家安全和经济增长的核心。 与此同时，未来工程师的专业背景也在发生变化。毕业生不仅要精通技术，还要能够识别未满足的需求，在时间限制下解决不熟悉的问题，并适应不断增长的技术变革速度。 工程专业毕业生必须能够在不同的环境中担任技术领导者，从小型初创公司到全球分散的公司。为了应对不断变化的职业需求，高等教育机构正在改革他们培养工程师的方式，创业培训在工程教育中越来越普遍。这项工作将开发评估材料，可用于帮助定义和评估工程专业学生的创业能力，因为这种能力是在基于工程的创业计划中开发的。该项目将满足工程专业毕业生提高创业能力的重要需求。传统的创业能力指标是以大规模的商业成果为基础的，如初创公司的成功或吸引资本投资的能力。 寻求提高和发展工程专业学生的创业能力的工程项目需要在技术创新的背景下，在发展阶段识别和评估创业能力的方法。 为了帮助工程创业教育弥合传统创业教育与21世纪世纪工程师职业需求之间的差距，本研究将建立工程专业学生从创业教育中获得的基本概念，产生与工程师创业教育目标相一致的结果衡量标准，进行试点评估，并在此基础上对工程专业学生进行创业教育。并开发可供工程学院使用的教学评估材料。工作将通过与创业经验的工程学院和教育研究人员之间的合作进行。这项工作的结果将提供教师和学生的核心技能和学习成果，可以从工程创业课程预期更好的理解。

This project at the College of Engineering at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor will help to ensure that engineers continue to drive economic development and innovation by developing ways to measure and assess entrepreneurial ability in undergraduate engineering students. Continued innovation is central to national security and economic growth. Simultaneously the professional context for the future engineer is changing. Graduates must be not only technically proficient, but also able to identify unmet needs, solve unfamiliar problems under time constraints, and adapt to an increasing rate of technological change. Engineering graduates must be capable of serving as technological leaders in diverse circumstances ranging from small start-up companies to globally-dispersed corporations. In response to changing career needs, higher education institutions are reforming how they train engineers, and training in entrepreneurship is becoming more widespread in engineering education. This work will develop assessment materials that can be used to help define and assess entrepreneurial ability in engineering students as that ability is developed within engineering-based entrepreneurship programs. This project will fill an important need in promoting increased entrepreneurial ability among engineering graduates. Traditional indicators of entrepreneurial ability are based on large-scale business outcomes such as success of start-up companies or ability to attract capital investment. Engineering programs seeking to increase and develop the entrepreneurial ability of engineering students need methods to identify and assess entrepreneurial ability in the developmental stages in the context of technological innovation. To help engineering entrepreneurship education bridge the gap between traditional business entrepreneurship education and the career needs of the 21st century engineer, this study will establish the fundamental concepts engineering students can gain from entrepreneurship education; generate outcome measures aligned with the goals of entrepreneurship education for engineers; conduct a pilot evaluation; and develop teaching assessment materials that can be used by engineering faculty. Work will be conducted through a collaboration between engineering faculty with entrepreneurial experience and education researchers. The results of this work will offer faculty and students a better understanding of the core skills and learning outcomes that can be expected from an engineering entrepreneurship curriculum.