Relationship between Student Competitive Activities and the Entrepreneurial Mindset

This paper analyzes the effect of student competitive projects as part of their curricular activities. The goal of the analysis is to examine the relationship between these activities and the building of entrepreneurial mindset in engineering education. Student competitive projects have been and continue to be an integral part the engineering curriculum. Cross disciplinary and inter disciplinary teams are formed to compete in various competitions in our engineering programs. These projects include: Aero Design Competition, Bridge Building, SAE Formula, Element One, Baja Team, etc. These are examples of student competitive events that are held on local, national and international levels. Competitions have great impact in team building skills, self confidence, and technological knowledge, linking theory and practice and building school pride. Our study involves surveys and interviews from team members of those competitions. These surveys enable us to validate the relationship between student competitive events and the entrepreneurial mindset within the engineering discipline. Our hypothesis is “Students competitive activities help entrepreneur mindset.” This paper will demonstrate how the competitive activities contribute to the development of the entrepreneur mindset. This does not mean that the students will become entrepreneurs after participating in these activities; however, they would have potential to become entrepreneurs. We will present the results of our study, our conclusions and the recommendations. This study may provide evidence of the importance of the utilization of student competitive activities as an experiential learning tool.