KEENzine Partner Showcase

For the University of New Haven, KEEN and the entrepreneurial mindset seemed a perfect way to create a differentiator for its students. Leadership and faculty recognized that engineering graduates with an entrepreneurial mindset would be the engineers that society and industry need now and in the future. Participation in KEEN provided a community of collaborators, a framework, and support to help achieve this goal. How does KEEN partnership set your students apart? Prior to joining KEEN, the University of New Haven (New Haven) had been working at developing differentiators for its students. Since engineering students graduate with similar technical skillsets, NewHaven leaders began to ask what would set students apart and better prepare them. JoiningKEENprovidedasharedlanguageandacommunity to create the differentiating factors graduates need. MichaelCollura, formerprofessorofchemicalengineering, had been leading the development and implementation of the Multidisciplinary Engineering Foundation Spiral Curriculum, which is a two-year sequence of courses taken by all engineering students. The faculty involved in this initiative were investigating new ideas in engineering education and discovered the KEEN Framework. There they found ideas and language that resonated with their initiatives. UNIVERSITY OF NEW HAVEN West Haven. Connecticut. Private. Partner since 2011 . 8,500 total students, 600 undergraduate engineeringand computer science students, 45 engineering and computer science faculty. Maria-Isabel Carnasciali, assistant provost for assessment and faculty development, professor, mechanical engineering, was part of the initial core team of faculty exploring the KEEN partnership. The team attended KEEN events, ASEE gatherings, andothermeetingsamongNetworkpartners, eager to learnand garner resources. At ASEE, Maria-Isabel attended workshops facilitated by KEEN leaders from Saint Louis University and the University of Detroit-Mercy. Through them, she also learned about workshops conducted at Lawrence Technological Universitytotrainitsfacultyinentrepreneuriallymindedlearning. With these connections, New Haven joined KEEN and offered Integrating Curriculum with Entrepreneurial Mindset (ICE) workshops to its faculty. Participating faculty began to develop curricular modules to integrate entrepreneurial mindset (EM) into their classes. The KEEN core team knew curriculum integration was important, but they were also eager to engage and excite their undergraduate engineering students as part of a holistic implementation strategy. Scaling Up Student Involvement New Haven crafted a multi-pronged approach to student engagement that included: • Extra-curricular events designed with EM at the core • Participation in student events at other KEEN partner campuses • University Innovation Fellows, which trains students as campus change agents • An EM Living Learning Community (LLC) that has now absorbed the Engineering LLC • Recognition at graduation and a certificate through an EM-activities point system Jean Nocito-Gobel, former professor of civil and environmental engineering, andMaria-Isabel beganrunningstudentactivities. They borrowed Innovation Challenge ideas from Saint Louis University, which were fun, hour-long engineering activities to introduce curiosity, connections, and creating value. Longer events that borrowed ideas from Bucknell University and Villanova University included design competitions, a design expo, and weekend hackathons. The goal across these more extensive activities was to keep students in the “opportunity space,” asking questions and defining the problem context, before jumping into designing solutions. Equally important was enabling students to articulate and consider the many dimensions of value. “Can you convey the value of the project you’re making to people of different backgrounds? As soon as we started focusing on this and having students practice how to vocalize what value means - and depending who you’re talking with, ‘value’ has different meanings! - it changed the whole expo. They come back with glowing remarks.” - Maria-Isabel Carnasciali “We want to give our students everything they need to be successful. As we heard more about KEEN, we were also hearing from our own advisory boards and alumni that these are the skills and attributes that make an engineer grow, contribute to society, and stay relevant in their work. The success of our program rests on our students’ success. The more we can make sure they are going to be employed, successful, and happy people, then the more likely our program will grow.” - Maria-Isabel Carnasciali 58 59 KEEN’zine ― PARTNER SHOWCASE PARTNER SHOWCASE ― KEEN’zine