Developing Multidisciplinary Design Courses to Foster Engineering Entrepreneurship

Tom Mason, Anice Anderson, & William Kline, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology

This session presents three years of work on a Lemelson Foundation-funded course development project. It addresses the challenges of attracting students to alternative design courses when their schedules are tight and the requirements of their departments are rigid. Course content and pedagogical approaches tried are reviewed and related to the requirements of typical engineering majors that are accredited by ABET (Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology). Expected outcomes and various methods of evaluating them are discussed. The session describes the way in which Rose-Hulman resources, like its student-managed technology transfer operation and incubator/new product development center, enhances commercialization of student design efforts. However, the argument is made that the content and methods of the courses are valuable for all engineering students.