Open Minis: Curriculum

What Is the Point of Minors in Entrepreneurship and Innovation?

University-wide entrepreneurship programs have spread across the nation. One interesting dimension is the creation of minors in entrepreneurship and innovation. The session will examine the mission and curriculum strategy of different minors. The end goal will be to help universities considering minors to chart a path in harmony with their mission.

Presenter:
Deborah Streeter, Cornell University

Making a Senior Project Count: From idea to a commercial product

We present a successful example of how a student’’s senior project can lead to the formation of a real business through a student, faculty, and institutional partnership. We discuss the implementation of a model for entrepreneurial encouragement that allows for profit sharing between students, faculty and the institution. We review logistical and practical hurdles and their resolutions as they led to a practical business implementation of the student project. We also present a curricular structure complementary to these efforts to facilitate the entrepreneurial process. Key information for each step of the partnership are presented and discussed.

Presenters:
Rolfe Sassenfeld, New Mexico State University
Philip Braker, New Mexico State University
Jeff Beasley, New Mexico State University

Engineering Innovation Track: Integrated innovation education for engineering students

The Engineering Innovation Track is a long-term, project-based learning approach targeted to revolutionize education in the Mechanical Engineering (ME) Program of the Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering at the University of Cincinnati (UC). The approach takes full advantage of UC’’s renowned mandatory co-op program and the Design Clinic, the unique senior capstone design course in the ME Program at UC, to develop coherent technical and professional threads woven across the entire ME curriculum and to foster innovative and entrepreneurial engineers for the 21st century. The Engineering Innovation Track has been running as a pilot project over the past two years and is scheduled to expand to the whole College of Engineering and Applied Sciences at UC. We will present the details of the program, the lessons learned in the pilot phase, as well as some concrete examples of student learning and student work.

Presenter:
Clarissa Belloni, University of Cincinnati

One Size Does Not Fit All: Unbundling and other strategies to scale I&E in courses campus-wide for every one of your students

Teaching innovation and entrepreneurship to a class of 25 or 50 students is one thing, but how in the world do you get to 2,500 or 25,000 students on your campus? Where are the beachheads to even begin such a seemingly impossible task? Do that many students even want to learn about I&E? Where do you find enough faculty? A growing number schools are tackling these scaling challenges through a variety of very different approaches. For instance, at University of Maryland, an unbundling strategy has resulted in over 50 courses with nearly 3,000 students specifically learning elements of design thinking or lean startup and 13,000 students overall engaged in I&E in at least some way. There have been plenty of lumps and lessons learned along the way! Come and share your lumps and your specific approaches that might be translatable to other schools.

Presenter:
Dean Chang, University of Maryland

Track: Curriculum