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Entrepreneurship in Engineering Education Session T2E Entrepreneurship in Engineering Education Serge Luryi1, Wendy Tang1, Nadia Lifshitz1, Gerrit Wolf2, Simona Doboli3, Joseph A. Betz4, Peter Maritato5, and Yacov Shamash1 Abstract - The recent changes in the world and engineering for Medical and Security System. The Consortium, led by the present both challenges and opportunities to the University at Stony Brook, was supported by the National engineering education. Engineering education is changing Science Foundation (NSF). Another purpose is to articulate to meet these challenges. More and more engineering our views on the future engineering entrepreneurial programs programs strive to include entrepreneurship and at Stony Brook. innovation, traditionally American values, in the This paper is organized as follows: In the next Section, engineering curriculum. In this paper, we present our view we present a short review of entrepreneurship education in the on teaching entrepreneurship to future engineers and engineering curricula. Section 3 describes in more details our describe our experience in introducing entrepreneurship Sensor Consortium, including its position at Stony Brook in engineering education through an NSF-sponsored pilot University, its structure, and components. Section 4 is a program based on collaboration between Stony Brook discussion of our experience in teaching entrepreneurship University and three other major higher education while Section 5 presents our vision of future entrepreneurship institutions on Long Island. programs. Index Terms – Entrepreneurship, medical sensor systems. ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN THE ENGINEERING CURRICULA INTRODUCTION Traditionally, courses on entrepreneurship originated in business or management schools. This began to change during The tremendous recent changes in the world order present the last decade when many educational institutions began to both challenges and opportunities to the engineering introduce entrepreneurial education in the engineering education. The environment we now face is very different curriculum. By now, more than 400 engineering schools offer from even a decade ago. The practice of engineering is some entrepreneurial and business courses. Among several changing with the globalization of manufacturing, research existing models for entrepreneurial education [1], we shall and development. New interdisciplinary fields have come to consider two well known exemplary programs, those of MIT life and traditional engineering is increasingly influenced by and Stanford. The MIT program, though open for engineering the information technology. Employment shifts to smaller and science students, is centered at the Sloan School of entrepreneurial firms often located offshore. Engineering Management, while the Stanford program belongs to the education seems poised to follow the jobs. After all what can School of Engineering. The Sloan School offers a wide range the US offer that others will find hard to emulate? of courses in launching, managing, and growing technology- We believe one of the most powerful answers is based businesses available to engineering and science entrepreneurship. Not only has this been the traditional students. The courses use a variety of teaching methods: case American strength, but its very foundation rests on the unique studies, internships, guest lectures, external reviews of student advantages of our society, our openness, mobility, relative assignments by venture capitalists, and student projects. All absence of corruption, relative freedom from red tape, our courses involve teamwork and focus on presentation skills. As extremely well established system of intellectual property a part of the MIT program, the MIT Entrepreneurship Center protection and widely available venture funding structures. was instituted in 1996 to help MIT students, alumni, and We do not teach all that to our engineers, they learn faculty to start and sustain entrepreneurial activity. It provides entrepreneurship on their own, usually well past the university an array of educational programs, networking opportunities, stage of their careers. In our view, this must change, and technologies, and resources. The Center also conducts the change rapidly. This change must be reflected in the curricula, renowned MIT $50K Entrepreneurship Competition [2] that is but more importantly, in the attitude at our academic designed to encourage MIT students and researchers to act on institutions. their talent and ideas. The Competition awards money and One purpose of this paper is to share our recent business startup services to outstanding teams of student experience with a pilot program, called the Sensor Consortium 1 Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Stony Brook University, NY 2 Harriman School of Management and Policy, Stony Brook University , NY 3 Computer Science Department, Hofstra University, NY 4 Department of Architecture & Construction Management, Farmingdale State University, NY 5 Engineering and Industrial Technology Department, Suffolk Community College, NY 1-4244-1084-3/07/$25.00 ©2007 IEEE October 10 – 13, 2007, Milwaukee, WI 37th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference T2E-10 Session T2E entrepreneurs. The Competition is open to all undergraduate While the Sensor Consortium has a common goal of and graduate students. promoting entrepreneurship and shares some common features The Stanford Technology Ventures Program (STVP) [3] with the above programs, it is a unique organization in that it is hosted by the department of Management Science and embraces a very diverse, racially and socially, cross-section of Engineering within Stanford University's School of Long Island population. It includes both undergraduate and Engineering. It has a strong outreach effort that includes graduate students and faculty; it involves four different hosting international conferences on teaching educational institutions ranging from a private college to a entrepreneurship. Stanford’s STVP is mainly an educational research-oriented university to local two-year community program for individual students founded on the premise that in college. It differs from all entrepreneurial college programs in addition to technical skills, students need to know how to that the entrepreneurial activities are not a part of the college identify market opportunities and to take leadership roles in academic and the funding is provided by a federal grant from business. To meet this goal, the program offers both the NSF PFI program. The Sensor Consortium has been introductory and advanced courses in the field of conceived as a pilot program to build a foundation for the entrepreneurial marketing, finance, strategy, and innovation. future engineering entrepreneurial education programs. In the The courses range from standard academic courses for following sections we shall describe our experience of two undergraduate and graduate students to large public lecture years of the Consortium operation. We shall assess the role of series such as the Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders, to the Sensor Consortium in the process of developing intensive, year-long programs such as the Mayfield Fellows entrepreneurial skill among engineering students and Program. fermenting future development of the entrepreneurial At MIT and Stanford, as in hundreds other college programs. programs, the entrepreneurial education is part of formal curricula, and the entrepreneurial activity is funded by the SENSOR CONSORTIUM FOR MEDICAL SECURITY SYSTEMS respective schools or colleges. The case is very different for AND ITS SCOPE OF ACTIVITY the Sensor Consortium at Stony Brook. Our course in The Sensor Consortium is centered at the Electrical and entrepreneurship was specially developed for the Consortium Computer Engineering Department of the College of students (Section 3.3.II.) and is not a part of the Stony Brook Engineering and Applied Sciences at Stony Brook University. academic curriculum. The support for the Consortium Many of the faculty members and staff of the Electrical and activities was provided not by the participating academic Computer Engineering Department are experts in the sensor institutions but by a two-year federal grant from the NSF systems for medical and security technologies. Not under its Partnership for Innovation (PFI) program that surprisingly, this expertise gave rise to the technical promotes innovations by bringing together colleges and orientation of this entrepreneurial project. universities, state and local governments, private sector firms, Long Island, with its defense industry past and large and nonprofit organizations. number of higher-education institutions, is a fertile ground for Out of approximately a hundred NSF PFI funded projects high-tech industries. It has many centers funded by the state [4], most promote entrepreneurship, directly or indirectly. For and local governments. A tremendous amount of effort is comparison, we briefly review two PFI projects that are most aimed at promoting entrepreneurial and technology transfer similar in spirit to the Sensor Consortium. They are: New activities mainly for businesses. Not much has been done to Paradigm for Entrepreneurial Discovery and Business educate engineering students in entrepreneurship. Development (University of Louisville) and ACTiVATE The Sensor Consortium was inaugurated in June 2004. Program (University of Maryland, Baltimore County). The main objective of the Consortium is to provide The primary objective of the project A New Paradigm for engineering and technical
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