Understanding the technical entrepreneurship landscape in engineering education (CCLI-Phase 2)

Abstract

Over the past decade, entrepreneurship has emerged as a critical aspect of engineering education. Driven by changes in the global economy, entrepreneurship is one of the fastest growing areas of course development. Across the U.S., literally hundreds of entrepreneurship courses, programs and certificates are offered for engineering students, yet little has been done to define what constitutes appropriate content or to assess the degree to which these educational experiences have resulted in student learning of entrepreneurial knowledge, skills and attitudes. Under funding from the National Science Foundation, CCLI - Phase II, we are conducting a nationwide study to determine the status of entrepreneurship education across the U.S. As a subset of this larger study we are investigating the variety of entrepreneurship opportunities available on U.S. engineering campuses. To do this we examined institutional websites to collect information on: a) programs and courses in entrepreneurship that are offered to engineering students, b) where these programs and courses are located within the university, and c) extracurricular learning opportunities and resources for entrepreneurship (e.g., centers, incubators, entrepreneurship contests, funding in entrepreneurship, etc.). To achieve completeness, data collection and verification was accomplished by three researchers. Cluster analysis was conducted using PASW Modeler to group institutions into like categories. Several algorithms were tested with the two-step algorithm yielding the best results in terms of cluster quality; and we were able to identify important cluster predictors. In this paper, we provide two types of clusters related to engineering schools. First we clustered schools according to variables depicting opportunities offered within engineering schools, as well as by creating a surrogate variable to emphasize the degree to which engineering schools are involved in entrepreneurship. For those engineering schools that offer coursework, course offerings were coded and a second set of clusters was created to determine the 'perspective' by which entrepreneurship was taught. This paper reports on this analysis and discusses the different types of models implemented at institutions to deliver entrepreneurial education in engineering schools, as well as providing exemplars from various clusters. When complete, this work will provide faculty with essential models, actionable information about institutional factors, and common curricular and extracurricular practices. © 2011 American Society for Engineering Education.