(69c) Integrating Entrepreneurship Mindset through Makerspace-Based Design Project into a Second-Year Engineering Curriculum

In today’s global chemical engineering industry, softer skills like teamwork experience, presentation skills, awareness of social and environmental responsibilities, and understanding of global impacts are now recognized as crucial. Practicing chemical engineers are expected not only to be technically knowledgeable but also skilled in communication and leadership. Along with soft skills, entrepreneurship mindset (EM) with the characteristics of curiosity, connections, and creating value has become one of the skillsets that employees are screening for. However, the typical chemical engineering undergraduate core curriculum has not adapted to satisfy all these needs in the chemical industry. Integrating opportunities into the curriculum for students to develop these skills is essential but challenging. To overcome this challenge, many universities have been opening academic Makerspaces on college campuses.

Makerspace equipped with digital design and manufacturing tools, along with traditional machine shop equipment, allows the student to develop engineering design skillsets. The primary purposes of Makerspace facilities are to foster students’ creativity, to promote hands-on prototyping and designing, and to encourage cooperation; as a result, to create a community. However, many freshman and sophomore-level students are not aware of the opportunities in the Makerspace. Thus, it is essential to introduce early-year students to Makerspace and encourage them to utilize the space. To achieve this, “designing a calorimeter” project was integrated into the “Introduction to Thermodynamics” course. This course is a sophomore-level class and is the first course in the chemical engineering sequence. The assigned project included background research phase, 3-D modeling phase, prototyping phase, and testing phase. Throughout the semester, students need to work with their team and delivered project milestones, created Adobe Spark page as their final artifact, and engaged in a competition at the end of the semester. This project improves student entrepreneurship and creativity skills. It helps them to understand design phases in the early year of their degree as well as develops their teamwork and communication skills.

In this presentation, the details of the project will be described, and the learning outcomes will be evaluated. The author believes similar assignments can be easily implemented into other courses resulting in sustaining Makerspace and developing students’ skillsets.