Stimulating and supporting change in entrepreneurship education: Lessons from institutions on the front lines

Abstract

This paper describes Pathways to Innovation (Pathways), a national program that uses a team-based guided change process to help faculty and institutions introduce and embed innovation and entrepreneurship into formal and informal educational experiences for undergraduate engineers. The paper briefly reviews the program design, its research-based foundations, and the sequence of activities for the initial cohort of twelve teams from twelve different schools. Initial results from teams' efforts, some of the "lessons learned" from the evaluation of the first year, and the implications of those lessons both for expansion of the program and for engineering education more generally are discussed. Each school's Pathways effort is led by a team1 and the teams themselves are in turn gathered into a national network.2 The schools vary widely in their institutional profile with regard to size, student demographics, governance, initial breadth of entrepreneurship education opportunities for engineering students, and availability of off-campus entrepreneurship opportunities in the surrounding region. Despite these differences, multiple factors were identified over the course of the program year that were associated with success in making entrepreneurship education more available and accessible for undergraduate engineering students. Participating schools implemented strategies that included introducing new courses and programs, developing learning spaces, and creating faculty development activities. Program staff modified elements of Pathways in response to formative evaluation activities, as well as to strengthen specific components associated with team success. The program now includes 37 schools and will continue to expand; while exciting, this growth presents scaling challenges for program staff.