Entrepreneurship and ABET accreditation: How and where does it fit?

Abstract

As a result of economic and workforce trends, there is a strong interest among policy makers and educational stakeholders in graduating more engineers with entrepreneurship skills and an entrepreneurial mindset. Given the role that ABET accreditation takes in shaping undergraduate engineering curriculum, wide adoption of entrepreneurship education could be driven by demonstrating the manner in which its outcomes align with accreditation mandates. This work in progress describes research taking place that is designed to develop a robust rationale for aligning entrepreneurship education with ABET Criterion 3 a-k, and to provide examples of the manner in which entrepreneurshiprelated outcomes can meet these criteria.

Development of an Entrepreneurial Mind-set within a Three-Semester Mechanical Engineering Capstone Design Sequence Based on the SAE Collegiate Design Series

“…The entrepreneurial mindset is the application of the "three Cs" to engineering practice and not necessarily the creation of new business. Inclusion of entrepreneurial education is a valuable addition to the traditional engineering curriculum [24,25,26] and aligns with portions of ABET Criterion 3 a-k [27], though more discussion is warranted with approved ABET student outcome revisions [28]. As described above, learning objectives for the three-semester sequence are provided in [5].…”

K-WIDE: Synthesizing the Entrepreneurial Mindset and Engineering Design

“…For example, Duval-Couetil et al have surveyed students to determine their attitudes toward entrepreneurship 21 and Besterfield-Sacre et al surveyed employers to develop a list of entrepreneurial competencies that form a Entrepreneurship Knowledge Inventory 22 . Other studies have focused more on entrepreneurial instruction 16,23,24,25,26,27,28 and the perceptions of faculty teaching entrepreneurship 29 . Lastly, there are several studies exploring the synergies between engineering and entrepreneurship, ranging from including entrepreneurial competencies into core engineering classes 30 , to programmatic threads in entrepreneurship 26 , to the alignment of Entrepreneurship and ABET 24 .…”

Assessment of Fluid Power Modules Embedded in Junior Level Thermodynamics and Fluid Mechanics Courses

“…The entrepreneurial mindset is the application of the "three Cs" to engineering practice and not necessarily the creation of new business. Inclusion of entrepreneurial education is a valuable addition to the traditional engineering curriculum [21,22,23] and aligns with portions of ABET Criterion 3a-k [24].…”