Inculcating an entrepreneurial mindset in engineering education: Project approach

In a competitive global economy, it is important for engineering students to develop entrepreneurial skills that include effective collaboration and communication, persisting and learning from failure, management, and solving ambiguous problems. This paper summarizes a project that aims to instill these skills as part of an entrepreneurial mindset in engineering students. The project was implemented in an introductory electric circuits class with a mixed representation of students majoring in electrical, computer, civil, and mechanical engineering. Students were organized into groups of two or three to design a temperature sensor using a negative temperature coefficient thermistor. Students groups were provided with customer specifications and were given a month to research the problem and obtain a viable solution. The groups were required to provide evidence compiled into a written product proposal that included a bill of materials, cost analysis, circuit design and simulation, testing plan, layout of the printed circuit board and packaging schematic, delivery time, and the voltage-temperature relationship of the designed circuit. After submitting the written proposal, each group was given five minutes to pitch their proposal using a poster in an effort to convince the customer (in this case, the instructor) that their design was the best and most cost-effective solution.