“Character discovery” explores with students the intersection between the engineering profession and strength of character. This module includes 3 main pieces: an activity, a lecture, and an assignment. These are described below: Activity: The in-class portion begins with a reminder of previous parts of the course that have connected to the relevance of character in engineering including a lecture on cultural differences in engineering and a class session on “engineering before engineers”. The instructor asks an open question: why does character matter to an engineer? Students are then broken up into 3-4 groups of 10-15 students, each of which are given a stack of sticky notes and markers and a large whiteboard on the wall. In their teams, students are encouraged to brainstorm the character traits they deem important for engineers, write each one on a separate sticky note, and stick them on the whiteboard. They are advised to communicate together but also add individually as well. When students initially seem to slow down on adding traits, students are encouraged to think outside of the box as well. They don't have to think only of professional engineers, what do they look for in their teammates now in their classes? What traits do they hope they have now? The instructor can add some examples of humorous or outside-the-box ideas to get the students thinking (e.g. brings coffee for everyone, always has a good joke). Once students seem to be slowing down again on adding traits, we ask them to start organizing the traits they have however they may choose. For example, students might put all the traits that pertain to how an engineer might interact with others (e.g. good teamwork, communication skills, etc) together. They can use dry erase markers on the board to help describe each grouping. After teams seem finished, they are encouraged to walk around the room and look at the other teams' work. They don't have to do this as a team, but can move around individually. Students then return to their seats and begin the debrief. This includes asking questions such as, were there any traits that surprised you? Were there any traits you wish you had put? Were there any traits you disagreed with? etc. Lecture: Following the activity, students are given a brief lecture/presentation that introduces character, virtues, vices and examples of virtues/character strengths that students might encounter in their four-year curriculum. It also covers some strategies for developing character strengths and concludes with the introduction of a follow up assignment explained below. Assignment: As homework, students were given a written reflection assignment that invites students to consider how character is necessary to engineering and the role of character virtues in the students’ future. Students are asked 5 reflection questions which are listed below: Why does character matter to an engineer?Create a timeline of what your engineering trajectory could look like, from your early years to your final career goals. Where do issues of character come into play in your timeline? Where are different character traits relevant?Choose one character virtue that was discussed in the class lecture. Define this character trait in your own words.Find a current engineering exemplar of the character virtue you chose in #3 and explain how they show that virtue and why it is necessary for them as an engineer.Choose at least one virtue that you would like to develop for yourself during your time as a undergraduate student. How can you better develop that virtue? When do you think this might happen? Be specific!

The 2022 Engineering Unleashed Fellows are a cohort of twenty-one faculty members from sixteen institutions of higher education across the U.S., recognized for their contribution to engineering education and entrepreneurial engineering.

Each week, share an Engineering Unleashed card to LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook! #mindsetcard

First-year engineering educators must understand and embrace the connection between traditional first-year engineering curriculum and entrepreneurial mindset. Here's how.

Engineering Unleashed's website has several tools that help you collaborate with peers and engineering education thought leaders. Learn more here!

Each year, through a committee of engineering leaders and a nomination process, KEEN has rock-and-roll themed awards for its “rising stars,” junior faculty who elevate themselves as educators with extraordinary impact on their students and colleagues.

Generate better student-employer matches that lead to long-term success by ensuring students are adding concrete value and employers understand the breadth and depth of that value.

Think of context as ‘the messy human condition.’ Context includes politics, financial pressures, social stratification, gender and identity issues, and so on. Helping engineering students increase their social awareness enhances their ability to be empathetic and to make smart decisions.

In addition to entrepreneurial mindset-infused course work, engineering students can take advantage of a living learning community (E2LLC) where they can build a portfolio of work that leads to recognition during graduation.

Opportunity recognition is a key aspect of the entrepreneurial mindset. In addition to the technical skills we cultivate in our students, we want to foster their mindset to be value creators. These cards will help!

This project is described in a presentation at ASEE 2020 "Best of First-Year Programs Division" session.Background and IntroductionHands-on team-based open-ended design projects in freshman engineering courses have been shown to significantly improve student retention due to the benefits of active hands-on learning, self-directed acquisition of knowledge, development of skills and confidence necessary to succeed in engineering and a growing sense of community. Open-ended design projects can range from highly structured to theme-based to free choice. Combining entrepreneurial thinking and maker technology, student-driven free-choice open-ended design projects allow students to generate their own idea, take ownership of their design project, and results in significant gains in creativity and entrepreneurial intentions. This card describes a free-choice open-ended design project that supports student autonomy, one of the three basic psychological needs from self-determination theory (SDT). SDT postulates that individuals will adopt more internalized/autonomous forms of motivations, resulting in more optimal learning outcomes, when three basic psychological needs are satisfied: autonomy, a sense of choice and control; relatedness, a sense of positive and supportive connections to others; and competence, a sense of mastery and self-efficacy. The introduction to engineering course is a freshman level 2-credit 15-week lecture and lab course consisting of a 50-minute lecture and a 2-hour 50-minute lab each week. Most students enroll in this course during their first semester in college. The course aims to provide students with an introduction to engineering, introduces the broad topics of the engineering design process, engineering modeling and drawing, teamwork, technical communication, project management and an entrepreneurial mindset. In addition, technical knowledge such as computer-aided design including 3D printing and programming a microcontroller is introduced to help students with their two multidisciplinary design projects, i.e., a well-defined project during the first half of the semester (See Card "Project: Autonomous Mail Delivery System") and an open-ended project during the second half. The course is a required course for students majoring in aerospace engineering, chemical engineering, electrical engineering and mechanical engineering. Project Description and ImplementationThis card provides all of the materials needed to implement a nine-week long team-based open-ended multi-disciplinary design project in an introduction to engineering course. Students, in teams of four, work on their project in class during lecture and lab for nine weeks. There are two lecture periods dedicated to introduce the project before students work on the project during the labs. The project description and grading are in the "Project Description" folder. The project uses the following "theme" statement: "Design an automated solution for a space such as a home, campus building including dorm, office, retail, restaurant, hospital, library, and factory. Your design should add value in an economic, environmental, and/or societal sense. For example, your design might help reduce costs, increase efficiency, reduce pollution/waste, and/or improve accessibility, among other things. Your design must incorporate an Arduino or other microcontroller." Research results from SDT (See paper in the "Publications" folder) showed that, compared to other project definitions which further place constraints on scope and materials, this autonomy-supportive version of the project statement results in more positive student motivational responses. Another interesting finding from the research suggests that the provision of more choice and control seems to have a more dramatic positive impact on women compared to men. The schedule of the project is shown below along with brief descriptions: Week 1 (Lecture 1): Pain Point Investigation and Information Collection (worksheet, group discussion)Week 2 (Lecture 2): Information Synthesis and Opportunity Identification (worksheet, group discussion) Week 3 (Lab 1): Problem Definition, Brainstorming and Solution Prototyping (worksheet, group discussion, hands-on building) Week 4 (Lab 2): Design Decision and Project Management (worksheet, group discussion) Week 5 (Lab 3): Proposal Presentation (oral presentation) Week 6/7/8 (Lab 4/5/6): Prototype Construction & Testing (hands-on building) Week 9 (Lab 7): Final Presentation and prototype demonstration (video, oral presentation and demo) The two lectures help students identify pain points, and collect and synthesize information. Ideally, they should be given at least two weeks before the start of the project so that students have plenty of time to decide which project to work on. The worksheets used in the two lectures are in the "Lecture Worksheets" folder. Lab 1 and Lab 2 give students the opportunity to go through the engineering design process: define the problem, gather information, generate alternative concepts, evaluate the alternatives, select the most promising concept, plan and manage the project. The problem definition and planning documents used are in the "Supplemental Lab Materials" folder. During the three project construction labs, a lab agenda is used to help students track their progress. It is in the "Supplemental Lab Materials" folder. Students are asked to complete a business model canvas for their project (assigned during the second construction lab, instructions and template are in the "Supplemental Lab Materials" folder). They are also asked to write a testing plan for their prototype (assigned during the last construction lab, instructions and template in the "Supplemental Lab Materials" folder). Students have to submit five project deliverables. Instructions, due dates and grading rubrics are in the "Project Deliverables" folder. Evaluation and Future WorkIn the SDT research conducted, for every week of the nine-week project, students were given a Situational Motivation Scale (SIMS) survey, which is an instrument to measure different types of motivations on a continuum ranging from autonomous (internal) to controlled (external) motivations. This continuum includes intrinsic motivation, a deeply internalized state of engagement based on interest, enjoyment, satisfaction and passion; identified regulation, a state in which actions are based on an internal sense of self and perceived value, importance, or usefulness of a task; external regulation, a state of compliance with external pressure, prompted by contingent reward or punishment avoidance, and amotivation, state of impersonal or non-intentional action due to learners finding no value and no desirable outcomes in a learning activity. This survey provides useful diagnostic information and practical insights into course design to support more positive forms of student motivational responses. The survey reveals, for example, that the open-ended design project focusing on automation described in this card seems to result in higher external motivation signals and lower internal motivation signals for chemical engineering students. How to come up with remedies to reach this population is an urgent next step in the project design. The weekly motivation survey also shows a dip in positive motivations during Week 2. How to modify the activity to better support positive student motivation is another future improvement. Furthermore, given that the SIMS profile from this project shows both higher average amotivation and external regulation values compared to the “truly autonomous” motivation profile, identifying strategies to further motivate students to adopt more positive forms of motivation is one more important future work. A Basic Needs Satisfaction Scale (BNSS) survey was given at the end of the semester, which measures the degree to which three basic psychological needs of autonomy, relatedness and competence are satisfied. Survey results show that competency may play a role in shaping the motivational responses of students. Therefore, if you do plan to implement an open-ended automation project like the one described in this card, make sure to give students a tutorial and sufficient practice on Arduino, sensors and actuators to make students feel confident in their ability to completing the project. Tutorial and examples on using Arduino, sensors and motors can be found in the Card "Project: Autonomous Mail Delivery System". Both the Situational Motivation Scale (SIMS) survey and the Basic Needs Satisfaction Scale (BNSS) survey can be found in the "Surveys" folder.

This project describes a board game that was developed to teach first-year engineering students about concepts associated with an entrepreneurial mindset. It was implemented at Rowan University in a class of 36 students. Students play in groups of 4-5 students with the goal of moving their game piece to the center of the game board by going through 4 stages of an entrepreneur’s journey — “brainstorming stage,” “prototype stage,” “market stage,” and “sales stage.” As they move their game piece through each stage, the teams are asked questions about engineering curriculum knowledge, resources on campus, and legal/ethical issues. They are also presented with risk/reward cards where they have to decide how many of their existing points they would like to wager on an entrepreneurial related scenario. In the implementation of the board game at Rowan, students played the game for about 30-40 minutes of class time followed by a group discussion using a Recall, Summarize, Question, Comment, Critique worksheet (RSQCC). This worksheet allows students to dive a bit further into their experience and really connect back between the game and the material being covered in class as part of entrepreneurial mindset instruction. This board game helps students be less intimidated with business related concepts that they might otherwise avoid as part of their engineering degree program. Any faculty member that is looking for a different and novel approach for introducing concepts associated with an entrepreneurial mindset can use this board game.

Lafayette’s Meta Mindset provides a graphical construct and heuristic model for the process of entrepreneurial thinking. The Mindset highlights the (often lonely and even frightening) journey common to all entrepreneurial endeavors to create new social or commercial value. This journey is fueled by curiosity, is always iterative, requires management of a wide range of risks, encourages collaboration, and is never a “sure win.” Lafayette’s Meta Mindset invites faculty to deliberately create opportunities for students to practice this journey: building skills to recognize opportunities, managing risks, seeking effective collaborators, and understanding the intrinsic and extrinsic value of thinking like an entrepreneur. Practicing the entrepreneurial journey is scalable - from individual assignments, projects, and courses to lifelong endeavors. Continually practicing the journey empowers students to connect their personal development to a broad, entrepreneurial mindset. These experiences encourage students to engage their curiosity, move beyond fear of failure, and create value from unexpected opportunities. Meta Mindset offers a way for students to use each learning experience, no matter the scale, scope or subject matter, to prepare for larger challenges and opportunities they will face in their own lives by using each experience to refine their own abilities to think entrepreneurially. What does the journey look like? The Meta Mindset begins with an inspiration - the belief that something is possible, despite having not been previously achieved. Certainly, a person who is inspired to try to create something new has to consider the limits of their understanding of the challenge. To transform an inspiration into value creation, a disciplined process is necessary with the intent of discovery and taking deliberate risks. Creativity, collaboration, and a range of skills are critical in developing solutions and overcoming challenges in the creative process. The Meta Mindset contextualizes how these elements interact and shows that value creation is not just measured extrinsically, but also intrinsically. The concept of intrinsic value in the absence of extrinsic value is well appreciated by creative individuals who recognize the benefit of learning from failure. The mindset highlights any entrepreneurial process - from developing new ideas for strengthening society to product innovation. The Mindset is equally applicable to an individual as it is to a complex organization - from a local non-profit to a multi-national corporation. Indeed, some organizations and corporations are known for their innovation. The disposition, behaviors, and motivation of these organizations may well be represented by the approach depicted by Meta Mindset where curiosity is the fuel that ultimately delivers value. What we are excited about at LafayetteThe Meta Mindset has the potential to change the way both students and faculty members view education. Imbuing this kind of mindset cannot be achieved by simply describing the process in a classroom. An “immersion” is necessary for students to experience the journey alongside their professors and the College at large. Each encounter with the journey, no matter the context, reinforces the applicability of the process and has intrinsic value that becomes, simply, how we approach our lives.

Goal of this card: This card was created to orient new KEEN Partners once they have signed and executed the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Kern Family Foundation (which is operating in this sense on behalf of KEEN). Reviewing this card will provide you with information about how to get started, how to communicate about joining KEEN, how to begin the work on your campus, and how to start coordinating with the Kern Family Foundation and the KEEN Leadership Council. This card has been written specifically for KEEN Leaders and other faculty championing entrepreneurial mindset at new partner institutions. STEP 1: The AnnouncementWe are excited to announce your institution joining KEEN to the rest of the Network and want to work with you to broadcast that message to your campus community and beyond. Let’s coordinate on this! Foundation staff will contact your KEEN contact person (identified in your application) to schedule a virtual meeting. Who should attend: Anyone responsible for communications about KEEN within your college, as well as those you’ve identified as KEEN contacts on your campus. What is the agenda? Announcement of KEEN partnership to your campus community (you can see example press releases in the communications folder below) Announcement of KEEN partnership through our newsletters Publishing your institutional partner page on EngineeringUnleashed.com. Branding permission (see link below in communications folder) Miscellaneous topics such as KEENews subscriptions, upcoming events, etc. STEP 2: Building Awareness and ChampionsBuilding awareness and champions for KEEN among your staff and faculty is essential for this work to take hold. Let’s get started by sharing KEEN Leader Essentials - what others in the Network have developed and learned as promising practices. Foundation staff will contact your KEEN contact person to schedule a virtual meeting. Who should attend: You likely have a group of engineering faculty and staff serving as your KEEN Leader group. This will be a valuable meeting for this group. What is the agenda? Why regular internal meetings of your KEEN leaders and goal setting are important. How to grow your faculty engagement in KEEN. How to grow your student engagement in EM. How can EM be messaged to students, staff and faculty. What funding is available through the Kern Family Foundation and other sources. Are there a couple Network partners to connect to and mechanisms to do that. What are the next KEEN events or deadlines of which you need to be aware. STEP 3: Reaching Your FacultyFollowing these two introduction meetings, you have the opportunity to engage with other Network partners to launch the KEEN initiative on your campus and introduce more of your faculty and staff to EM and the Network. Please reach out to Foundation staff if we can help with these follow up meetings: KEEN launch, so your engineering faculty and staff become familiar with their roles internally and the opportunities to connect across the Network Engineering Unleashed demo, so your faculty become familiar with the website content and best practices for finding and creating useful resources. STEP 4: The Summer WorkshopYou will be selecting two KEEN leaders from your institution to attend a summer Engineering Unleashed Faculty Development (EUFD) program specifically for new KEEN leaders. These faculty or staff leaders will work on a KEEN-related project on your campus for a year and will receive support from coaches and mentors. STEP 5: Staying Up to Date Lastly - stay up to date on current opportunities and deadlines offered to KEEN partners. The KEEN Leader Group highlights current information that you’ll need. Bookmark it and be sure to check it regularly. Check your Engineering Unleashed profile to make sure you are subscribed to all newsletters.

This course uses the Question Formulation Technique in an introductory Circuits analysis course. At St Thomas this technique was implemented in a course of 30 first and second year students. A fundamental assumption of the QFT is that students learn and retain knowledge better when, fueled by curiosity, they ask their own questions, and use them to drive their learning.A total of four QFT research projects were assigned to students working in groups of four to six. Each project was launched with an in-class discussion, and the majority of the research work was done by students outside of class. Students were given between one and two weeks to research the answers to the questions asked in each research project. The topics covered in the research projects include basic circuit laws, linearity and superposition, sinusoidal steady-state AC circuit response, and operational amplifiers.The main deliverable for the project was a paper summarizing the research questions and answering those questions with documented references. The students also needed to reflect on the questions they raised, the answers they found, and the overall QFT-based research process. QFT technique could be applied to any course.

Our mission is to graduate engineers with an entrepreneurial mindset so they can create personal, economic, and societal value through a lifetime of meaningful work.

Engineering Unleashed Ambassadors are members of AICHe, the Global Home of Chemical Engineers. See their work here!

Engineering Unleashed Ambassadors are community members who hold leadership roles in their professional societies at the regional or national level.

For engineers to succeed in a world in which data is exponentially increasing, they will need to connect the unconnected. They must be able to see the landscape and map the intersection of ideas. That is the power of connections.

Entrepreneurial Mindset (EM) is a set of attitudes, dispositions, habits, and behaviors that shape a unique approach to problem-solving, innovation, and value creation.