Developing the Entrepreneurial Mindset in STEM Students: Integrating Experiential Entrepreneurship into Engineering Design

According to Neil Kane (2016), there is no better way to prepare students for the world of the 21st century, whether they aspire to work for a large company, start their own business, go into academia or devote themselves to public service, than through cultivating their skills in entrepreneurship. Th e entrepreneurial mindset has been defi ned as the set of atti-tudes, skills, and behaviors needed by students to succeed academically, personally, and professionally. It is the ability to see opportunities, marshal resources, and create value which are of high demand in both for-profi t and not-for-profi t organizations. Developing the entrepreneurial mindset requires a combination of critical developmental experiences and a well-coordinated combination of personal refl ection, peer support, and expert mentoring. Th e article provides an overview of an approach incorporating these key elements, to develop the entrepreneurial mindset in engineering undergraduate students through a two-semester design lab course. It uses evidence-based entrepreneurship methodology, while involving faculty and local business mentors in the development of the students. Th e approach used in developing the entrepreneurial mindset in the students draws heavily from Process Education principles. Process Education (PE) has been defi ned as a performance-based philosophy of education which integrates many diff erent educational theories, processes, and tools in emphasizing the continuous development of learning skills through the use of assessment principles in order to produce learner self-development. Process Education combines many components of both experiential education and problem-based learning (PBL). 1 R B Annis School of Engineering, University of Indianapolis 42 International Journal of Process Education (July 2020, Volume 11 Issue 1) promotes deep entrepreneurial learning via multiple avenues (Krueger, 2015). Eff ective programs exhibit co-immersion in which the entrepreneurial community highly involved within the program. Furthermore, the instructors need to be skilled at experiential learning. While evidence from problem-based learning and peer instruction models emphasizes the importance of domain expertise, expertise within a constructivist framework of education is even more essential (Krueger, 2015). Figure 1 Cyclical Nature of the Entrepreneurial Mindset Identify & evaluate opportunities Marshal resources to explore selected opportunities Create and deliver the value competitively Moving Students from a Novice towards an Expert Entrepreneurial Mindset Th e mindset of an expert diff ers signifi cantly from the mindset of a novice (Krueger, 2015). What diff erentiates the expert mindset is not the knowledge content, but a signifi cantly diff erent way of looking at the world. Experts structure their domain knowledge very diff erently. Knowledge structures are based on deep underlying beliefs and changing the knowledge structures requires changing those deep beliefs, oft en in a discontinuous fashion (Krueger, 2015). Th is exemplifi es constructivist learning as opposed to the traditional behavioristic learning model that emphasizes knowledge content (Krueger, 2009; Neergaard et al., 2012). Changing the knowledge structure, however, is a diffi cult task (Krueger, 2015). Mindset change occurs through a combination of critical developmental experiences (CDE) (Krueger, 2015) and a well-coordinated combination of personal refl ection, peer support, and expert mentoring (Goleman, 2013). Th e CDE are activities that are able to displace deeply rooted assumptions and beliefs in the mind. A deep exposure to models of the expert mindset is also critical for developing the expert mindset (Krueger, 2015). Combining Experiential Education and Problem-Based Learning Th e approach used in developing the entrepreneurial mindset in students draws heavily from Process Education (PE) principles. PE has been defi ned as a performancebased philosophy of education that integrates many diff erent educational theories, processes, and tools in emphasizing the continuous development of learning skills using assessment principles in order to produce learner self-development (Burke et al., 2009). Process Education combines many components of both experiential education and problem-based learning (PBL) (Burke et al., 2009). According to Morgan and Williams (2010), the defi nition of PE aligns well with the fi ndings of Woods (2000) and others concerning eff ective means of developing problem solving abilities in students. Th e skills identifi ed for eff ective problem solving include self-management, problem solving, interpersonal and group skills, assessment as a foundation for growth, change management, and lifetime learning (Morgan & Williams, 2010). Experiential education emerged from the ideas of educational theorist David Kolb (Burke et al., 2009). According to the Association for Experiential Education, experiential education is defi ned as, “a philosophy and methodology in which educators purposefully engage with learners in direct experience and focused refl ection in order to increase knowledge, develop skills and clarify values” (Association for Experiential Education, n.d.). PBL was introduced at McMaster University where Barrows and Tamblyn found that medical school graduates were oft en unable to apply the knowledge they learned to the experiential challenges they faced when working as interns in a hospital environment (Burke et al., 2009). Constructivist research shows that students learn more eff ectively, and remember longer (Dochy et al., 2003), if they are guided to construct their own knowledge such as in problemor project-based learning (Morgan & Williams, 2010). Students in problembased learning are better at applying their knowledge than students trained in lecture classes (Dochy et al., 2003). With PBL, the students are presented with an ill-defi ned problem and they work cooperatively to solve the given problem, while accessing resources as needed. PBL, like experiential education, is student-centered, with the students, rather than the instructor, managing the problemsolving process. Th e instructor’s role is simply that of a facilitator of learning (Burke et al., 2009). Holistic Entrepreneurial Mindset Development Approach Th e engineering program at the R. B. Annis School of Engineering (RBASOE) combines the identifi ed critical ele-