Fostering the entrepreneurial mindset in the engineering classroom

As the global economy continues to evolve, the requirements of our technology workforce are changing. In addition, over the past several years, there has been an ABET movement to revise engineering post secondary education. In response to these changing market needs, the biomedical engineering department piloted a new graduate level course during the 2007-2008 academic year, BioMedE599: Graduate Biomedical Engineering Design Team. The purpose of the course is to encourage the students to become adaptive learners through innovative design and provide them with the necessary skill sets to make them successful beyond the University environment as they approach new challenges. Interestingly, the culture cultivated during the two semester pilot course, resulted in more than a simple academic experiential exercise. Students in the class embraced an entrepreneurial mindset as evidenced by their abilities to raise $43,210 in external funds to develop their prototypes. Results suggest that the learning methods used in this course encourage students to take a more active role in their academic development and helps students develop critical entrepreneurial skills.