KEEN focuses on one mission: To graduate engineers with an entrepreneurial mindset (EM) so they can create personal, economic, and societal value through a lifetime of meaningful work.
KEEN is a partnership of more than 45 colleges and universities across the United States. The schools in the Network are driving change within engineering education—each committing to reach all of their undergraduate engineering students with entrepreneurial mindset. KEEN specifically impacts and influences the broader engineering ecosystem and reflects the belief that networks scale impact.
KEEN serves as a lab to test and showcase best practices in entrepreneurially minded learning. The Network seeks to represent the larger engineering education landscape, showing that EM benefits students regardless of institution type, size, or location. Through this collaborative network, institutions are able to work together to transform engineering education.
When Will Ebel, Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering at Saint Louis University, first heard about the pedagogy used by undergraduate engineering programs in KEEN, he was skeptical.
But when he adopted KEEN's EM concepts in the classroom, he found that students were actively engaged – and learned faster.
KEEN represents the institutional commitment that will continue to impact and grow the Engineering Unleashed community. This short video provides clarity on the KEEN origins of the community and its valuable contributions.
The community logo - Engineering Unleashed, powered by KEEN – reflects the impact of these institutions and recognizes that it is the hard work and dedication of a community of faculty and staff within these institutions who lead these efforts.
KEEN Partners agree to advance entrepreneurially minded learning – curiosity, connections, and creating value – for engineering undergraduate students.
Through the Network, institutions work together to improve educational experiences for students. Here, administration and faculty coordinate and innovate for the benefit of students. Through a shared language and framework, institutions and faculty implement entrepreneurially minded learning in a variety of contexts. This is how KEEN equips students to thrive in the changing world.
Technical skills continue to be critical. Engineers must be equipped with the knowledge and tools needed to solve the grand challenges of today and tomorrow. While students are learning these skills, however, faculty can work to give them experiences that will expand their paradigm. Faculty can equip students to identify opportunities and understand the impact of solutions.
In a dynamic and interconnected world, it is important for undergraduate engineering schools to teach technical skills while fostering curiosity, connections, and the creation of value. But it's not always obvious how to incorporate this mindset in classroom curricula and culture.
That's where KEEN can help. KEEN promotes collaboration among institutions and individuals who share this compelling vision. The Network also provides numerous tools and resources to make adoption of these ideas easy and impactful.
The power of the network is realized by the great work of the faculty and administration that are a part of it.
Whether it be faculty collaborating within their institution or partnering across universities, there are many opportunities for faculty to share best practices, contribute to content development, and shape the network in pursuing our mission of developing the entrepreneurial mindset in students.
View more articles and browse through entire KEEN'zine issues here.