Teaching entrepreneurial mindset in a first-year introduction to engineering course

With a mission to graduate engineers who can create personal, economic, and societal value through a lifetime of meaningful work, KEEN (Kern Entrepreneurial Engineering Network) started a movement of fostering an entrepreneurial mindset in young engineers. This paper will discuss the experience and evaluation of incorporating entrepreneurial mindset learning in a freshman Introduction to Engineering course. Introduction to Engineering is a one-semester 2-credit hour freshman lecture and lab course focusing on teaching engineering design process, with students completing a half-semester long multi-disciplinary design project. In addition, technical concepts such as engineering drawing, MATLAB and basic disciplinary knowledge are taught along with the introduction of "soft skills" such as communication, teamwork and project management. This paper will discuss how KEEN's 3Cs framework, i.e., curiosity, connections and creating values, was incorporated into the existing course content centered on an open-ended design project. The impact of this addition will be evaluated through student surveys on their awareness of entrepreneurial mindset concepts.