Developing An Extension For Engineering Education: Testing The Entrepreneurial Skills Of Key Participants

The development of an engineering education extension in high desert of California is testing the entrepreneurial skills of the key participants due to several factors exacerbated by the State’s budget crisis. A unique approach to provide ABET accredited undergraduate engineering education for the residents and the industry of the Greater Antelope Valley and adjacent regions has evolved, out of the regional desire to train engineers locally, without a thorough understanding of customer needs. A realistic model for higher education suggested by Maguad has been adopted that views employers as the customer and students as the higher education product. Understanding who the customers are is the crucial first step, according to Drucker, in understanding customer needs. Guided by Dewey’s and Tyler’s works on curriculum development, an exploratory mixedmethods study was initiated to identify customer needs. This was a sequential-explanatory study. The initial phase was quantitative and defined critical cases that informed the qualitative phase. The qualitative phase had two components. The first component was long interviews with senior managers or executives from organizations purposefully selected to participate based on the critical case identification from the first phase of the study. The second component was integration and synthesis of existing data and the findings derived from the interviews. The final result of the study was a force-field analysis that provided the basis for recommendations that will guide decision making relative to curriculum and program development designed specifically to address regional industry needs. This paper will discuss the research method, results, and the issues that the study revealed relative to industry needs as well as the structure and status of the program as it currently exists and the plans that have been derived from the recommendations that resulted from the study. This paper will also discuss recent events that are redefining the effort and the application of experience gained to entrepreneurial education in engineering.