MSOE students will be encouraged to think like entrepreneurs
| Published: 09/14/2006 |
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MSOE plans to foster more innovation and an entrepreneurial mindset among its students through a new collaboration with its Rader School of Business Center for Entrepreneurship, a broad spectrum of faculty on campus, and funds from two private sources.
In this case the idea of entrepreneurialism isn't limited to the scope of starting a new business, but also includes innovation and creativity in the corporate world. In fact, the call for more innovation and resourcefulness is coming from companies that hope to soon employ these students and simultaneously are feeling the pressure to stay competitive.
The first phase of implementation will be winter quarter, which begins in November, among freshmen biomedical engineering students. Specifics on how the plan will be incorporated into the curriculum are still being firmed up, but topics will include creative problem solving and team work. The program includes strict assessment methods to track the impact on students and faculty, according to Dr. John Gassert, the biomedical engineering program director who is the co-principal investigator of the project, along with Dr. Jeff Blessing, director of MSOE's management information systems degree program.
It is made possible by grants from the Kern Entrepreneurship Education Network (KEEN) in partnership with The National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance (NCIIA).
The NCIIA fosters invention, innovation, and entrepreneurship in higher education as a way of creating innovative, commercially viable, and socially beneficial businesses and employment opportunities in the United States. The program was founded on the premise that these components are essential to the higher education curriculum and vital to the nation's economic future. The NCIIA works with colleges and universities to build collaborative experiential learning programs that help nurture a new generation of innovators and entrepreneurs with strong technical and business skills, and the tools and intention to make the world a better place.
The Kern Entrepreneurship Education Network (KEEN) offers institutions access to vital resources for building quality entrepreneurship education programs that engage engineering and technical students in hands-on learning, and to instill an action-oriented entrepreneurial mindset in engineering, science, and technical undergraduates. KEEN provides financial and other resources to grantee institutions for the development of entrepreneurship curricula, modules, and extracurricular activities like business plan competitions, speaker series, student entrepreneurship clubs, and seminars.