A Way to Win: Incentivizing Engineering Faculty to Incorporate Entrepreneurship in Their Courses

It can be very challenging to incentivize engineering faculty to incorporate something new within their courses, labs or programs. Most faculty have the difficult task of balancing their teaching, research and service efforts, which can cause some to be risk averse at times or unwilling to change if what they think they are doing is effective. This can be frustrating for engineering programs, especially when new concepts need to be embedded. Entrepreneurship is a concept that has recently seen a huge uptick in incorporation within engineering programs. Many instances of incorporation have spurred change and have encouraged students to use an Entrepreneurial Mindset (EM) when faced with new challenges. The following study looks at a an internal, competitive professorship opportunity at one institution intended to support the inclusion of EM within engineering courses, labs, and programs. The analysis focuses on faculty awardees and their motivations linked to this opportunity. An assessment is presented looking at the types of projects proposed, how EM was incorporated, when the idea was first conceived, how many times an individual faculty member applied, motivation to apply, and the role of funding in the actual implementation of the project.