Creating An Entrepreneurial Culture At A Startup Engineering Program

In 1992, the College of Engineering at Rowan University was created asthe direct result of a $100 million gift from entrepreneur Henry M. Rowan.Mr. Rowan’s requirements were that the gift be used to create a high-quality,public undergraduate engineering institution and to impact the economicdevelopment of southern New Jersey, a region which has historically laggedbehind northern New Jersey. Having started with a clean curriculum slateduring a period of national change in engineering curricula in response toABET 2000, we had the opportunity to infuse an entrepreneurial cultureinto our engineering program from its inception. Speci cally, we have devel-oped the following policies/programs:  Created an 8-semester EngineeringClinic course sequence in which hands-on design projects are completed everysemester.  Developed a \job-fair" model for student clinic project stangin which students get \hired" into their Engineering Clinic projects by mar-keting themselves and their capabilities to faculty,  Created an Undergrad-uate Venture Capital Fund where students can obtain funding up to $2500per semester to develop their own original inventions,  Created the Com-petitive Assessment Laboratory for competitive benchmarking of consumerproducts.  Developed a micro-business model in which some EngineeringClinic project teams provide engineering services (design, fabrication, model-ing, etc.) to other projects,  Hired (College of Business) an endowed chair inentrepreneurial studies,  Created the Technological Entrepreneurship Con-centration, which is a certi cate program that will be populated jointly byEngineering and Business students,  Obtained state funding to build the