Fostering an Enterprising Learning Ecology for Engineers

Abstract

Over the last decade, many courses have been created in the hopes of getting engineering students more excited about innovationand entrepreneurship. While most of these courses have aimed to teach students business acumen, we believe that, under the rightcircumstances, traditional engineering courses can get students excited in these topics as well. We present Mechanical Engineering218 Smart Product Design, a graduate-level mechatronics course sequence at Stanford University, as an example of such a class. Inthis paper, we explore, in detail, the personal, contextual, and interpersonal factors which comprise ME218’s enterprising learningecology. We also highlight some of the immediate and longer-term outcomes of the course, including gains in students’ innovationself-confidence and entrepreneurial intentions.