1. Role and Assessment of Entrepreneurial Thinking in Undergraduate Engineering Education Vincent (Vin) P. Manno Provost & Dean of Faculty Professor of Engineering 129 th NEASC Annual Meeting and Conference Entrepreneurial Thinking: Its Role and Impact in Different Educational Settings December 10, 2014 Boston, MA 1

2. National Academy of Engineering, Educating the Engineer of 2020 (2004) D. Grasso, M. Brown-Burkins, Holistic Engineering Education: Beyond Technology (Springer, 2010) THE MISSING BASICS FOR THE 21 st CENTURY: Teamwork, communication, creativity, leadership, entrepreneurial thinking, ethical reasoning, global contextual analysis The Need for Change in Engineering Education 2

3. Engineering Is Process Not Content Time, Knowledge, Resources, Constraints, Societal Context Let’s Try It! (Prototype) Why Doesn’t it Work? (Test) Entrepreneurial Thinking is a mindset - one of the many cognitive skills on the engineer's virtual tool belt along with analysis, design, domain knowledge, … 3

4. Undergraduate residential engineering education Total enrollment of about 350 50% women BS degrees in ECE, ME, Engr 9-to-1 student/faculty ratio Endowment > $1 million/student Research expenditures > $1 million/yr Partner with Babson College, Wellesley College No academic departments No tenure Low tuition Everything has expiration date Olin - Created to Explore New Models of Undergraduate Engineering Education and Catalyze External Change 4

5. Restructuring Engineering Education: A Critical Need for Rebalancing to Focus on Innovation Feasibility Viability Desirability INNOVATION Overemphasized in Engineering Education Embed in the programs and culture 5

6. Curricular Elements Project-based courses – Requirements – Weave of Design and Entrepreneurship 6 Products and Markets – required for all first years  Passion, relevance, marshal uncontrolled resources  Multidisciplinary teaching team – academics, practitioners, non-specialists (engineers, scientists, anthologists,..)  Agile scrum training  promulgated to later courses Senior Year – Corporate-sponsored Design Projects(SCOPE) or Affordable Design and Entrepreneurship (Non-Profits, International) Entrepreneurship Electives plus Capstone  Integrate content knowledge and experiences  Building block for post-graduate move?

7. Nurturing Mindset Requires an Ecosystem Learning Continuum, Partners, Local E! Community 7 It’s more than courses (remember process >> content) Leverage partnership with Babson – No. 1 Entrepreneurship college in the US, content experts, atmospherics, joint programs Olin IP policy – what students (and faculty) create is theirs (Remember who was nice to you.) Boston area – hotbed of activity – experts, I-labs, TechStars, etc.

8. Assessment: What Do We Measure? How Do We Measure? Metrics – Desired Outcomes? 8 Current – Quantitative Direct entrepreneurial participation  Post-graduate employment in own start-up or someone else’s Class of 2014 already at 4% as of October 2014

9. Assessment: What Do We Measure? How Do We Measure? Metrics – Desired Outcomes? 9 Current – Qualitative Follow ‘stories’ of specific endeavors – integrate over time – some evidence suggestive of an innovation ecosystem Olin College Startup Indico Announces Funding 13 NOVEMBER 2014 - The team took the stage at Techstars Demo Day earlier this week and announced their $3M in funding. Built by a group of Olin College undergrads, Technical Machine has $1M in Seed funding to help developers create next gen Internet-enabled hardware December 12, 2013

10. Assessment: Future Plans, Explorations and Unknowns 10 Future – More general assessment across all postgraduate population Likert-type questions How important is application of business and entrepreneurial concepts to your professional activities? Unknowns Will we be able to adequately track of career trajectories How to account for earlier (before college), later experiences- additive and non-linear effects? What results = success (= achieving learning outcomes)? Missing questions – not knowing what we don’t know??