The Role of Entrepreneurship Program Models and Experiential Activities on Engineering Student Outcomes.

Entrepreneurship education is being delivered to greater numbers of engineering students through a variety of courses, programs, and experiential learning activities. Some of these opportunities are designed primarily to serve engineering students in their departments and colleges, while others are cross-campus, university-wide efforts to serve students from many disciplines. To date, few researchers have examined to what extent differing program models and experiential activities impact students’ perceptions of their entrepreneurial knowledge, skills, and self-efficacy. This paper examines these issues based on the results of a survey of 501 senior level engineering students enrolled in three institutions that offered three different models of entrepreneurship education. Findings indicate that higher perceptions of entrepreneurial knowledge were associated with the number of entrepreneurship courses taken and involvement in experiential learning activities. Further, students who were enrolled at an institution with a multidisciplinary program tended to rate their entrepreneurial abilities higher than those at two institutions with programs more embedded in engineering departments. This research provides faculty and administrators with valuable insight that can inform the development of entrepreneurship programs targeting engineers, and suggests areas for future research.

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