The synergistic roles of a supportive institutional environment, curriculum development and a student-Friendly business incubator in developing engineering students with an entrepreneurial orientation

Abstract

Stevens Institute of Technology has been creating an educational environment that has been named Technogenesis™ to capture an orientation towards entrepreneurship that permeates the broader institutional mindset, from undergraduate programs through to graduate programs and faculty scholarship. Technogenesis has been embraced as a strategic direction for the Institute through retreats, group discussions and forums over a number of years involving faculty, trustees, administrators and students. Curriculum development has seen the introduction of entrepreneurship elements into the undergraduate engineering core, mostly through the eight-semester design sequence, as well as elective coursework and seminars. Students are encouraged to work with faculty on projects that have the potential to spawn intellectual property as well as advance knowledge for dissemination in the traditional manner. The infrastructure is provided to assist and encourage faculty and students to move their intellectual property through to commercialization in cooperation with industry or through a startup venture in the Stevens Technology Ventures Incubator. These elements taken together are synergistically leading to a campus-wide excitement towards entrepreneurship both in educating students for a world in which such an orientation is becoming a key success factor and providing an additional path for faculty to contribute to their own success and that of the Institute.