Integrating Entrepreneurial Mindset in a Multidisciplinary Course on Engineering Design and Technical Communication

The engineering curriculum at XXXX University includes a sophomore level two-course sequence (required for engineering students in all disciplines) in which the primary learning outcomes are engineering design and technical communication. These courses are team-taught by faculty from Engineering and from Communications, specifically, Writing Arts in the fall and Public Speaking in the spring. Historically, the fall course has featured three major course deliverables: (1) a “research sequence” consisting of a rhetorical analysis, and annotated bibliography and a literature review, (2) a humanities assignment in which students explore the impact of technology on societal needs, and (3) laboratory and design reports stemming from hands-on engineering projects completed in lab. During the summer of 2019, the faculty team re-designed each of these three major course deliverables, with the goal of fostering an Entrepreneurial Mindset in students and leveraging synergies between the Entrepreneurial Mindset and the existing goals of the course (engineering design and technical communication). In particular, the faculty team created a new linkage between the research sequence and the humanities assignment. The research sequence is built around the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goals; each student chooses one of the goals to explore through their individual rhetorical analysis, annotated bibliography, and literature review. The humanities assignment is a team project in which students explore solutions to sustainability problems on the campus of XXXX University. Different sections of the course will use different engineering projects, but the faculty team has crafted a set of guidelines for the projects to ensure some uniformity of experience and expectations across the sections. The faculty team also developed rubrics that will be used to evaluate student performance on these re-designed assignments. The new assignments are being integrated into the Fall 2019 offering of Sophomore Engineering Clinic. This paper will give a detailed description of each of the assignments and how they are designed to align with the goal of fostering an Entrepreneurial Mindset. The paper will also present assessment data that will be collected throughout the Fall 2019 semester