Developing an Engineering and Entrepreneurship Collaborative Project

At the University of Oklahoma, students from most engineering disciplines take a course titled ENGR 2002 Professional Development. One of the four projects in the course requires each team to come up with an engineering solution to a market problem. At the conclusion of this project, the students pitch their idea to entrepreneurship experts and communicate why their idea is worthy of an investment. Following the presentation the students are asked challenging questions that stretch their understanding of the entrepreneurship process and are given guidance and feedback. In order to provide the students with the entrepreneurship knowledge to complete this project, non-engineering faculty and entrepreneurship experts provide support. This paper will look at one particular collaborative assignment that originated in the spring 2014 semester. The assignment requires students in a graduate level entrepreneurship course to study the initial ideas that the engineering students in ENGR 2002 produce and provide feedback. This paper provides a detailed description of this collaborative assignment and other entrepreneurship activities that are taking place in ENGR 2002. The effectiveness of the collaborative effort is assessed using survey data from the students' perceived value in the project and increased entrepreneurial activity from the engineering students.