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Pennsylvania State University
In July 2002, Penn State was awarded a three-year NCIIA
Grant to support E-Team project work and development of entrepreneurial skills.
The current Engineering Entrepreneurship Minor at Penn State allows us to launch
innovative undergraduate courses in engineering entrepreneurship.
Students are supported and rewarded for innovative
thinking by the opportunity to compete in the E-Ship competitions at the end of
Fall and Spring semesters, with awards for Most Creative/Innovative, Best
Elevator Pitch, Best Brochure and Best Overall Product. First-Year Seminar teams
are judged as a group, as are the Core Course Teams and the Stage II Teams. The
competitions are open forums for students to see other concepts, elevator pitch
techniques, and finance/marketing/business plans from the advanced teams.
The E-Ship Minor faculty are instructors, coaches and
mentors in the courses, bringing a unique variety of skills and expertise to the
student E-Teams. All tenured or tenure-track engineering professors either have
patents or are involved in technology-based venture creation. Other full-time
engineering faculties have either come from industry with high-tech start-up
experience, or are doing research involving next-generation sensor technology. A
local technology entrepreneur co-teaches with engineering faculty in the
Entrepreneurial Leadership and Technology-based Entrepreneurship courses. The
business faculty in the E-SHIP Minor have worked in technology companies and/or
continue to do industry consulting.
Students and faculty from traditionally under represented
groups in invention, innovation and entrepreneurship have been involved to date
through established ties with the Women in Engineering Program (WEP) and
Minorities in Engineering Program (MEP) in the College of Engineering. The
principal investigator (Elizabeth Kisenwether) will continue to work with the
Program WEP and MEP Directors and their students to encourage diverse student
participation in the E-SHIP courses and student E-teams.
New design and prototyping facilities opened in Fall 2001
called the Center for Engineering Design and Entrepreneurship (CEDE)
http://www.cede.psu.edu. The majority of the E-SHIP Minor classes are taught
in the CEDE facility which includes technology classrooms, two design labs with
new electronic test equipment (donated by Agilent), and a wood shop. Another
facility, the Learning Factory (see
http://www.lf.psu.edu) provides students access to rapid prototyping
equipment for a small fee to turn computer-aided design (CAD) prototypes into
scale versions or full-scale prototypes.
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