Spartan Semiconductor Services, Inc.: an entrepreneurial environment

Spartan Semiconductor Services, Inc. (SSSi) is a fictitious start-up company developed as a pedagogical environment in an interdisciplinary semiconductor processing course. This entrepreneurial engineering environment is maintained within both the classroom and the laboratory settings, resulting in a teaching and learning format which actively engages students in the learning process, going beyond the "cookbook" approach to spark student self-motivated learning. At SSSi the employees (students) work in teams to deliver a product, with managers (professors) available as manufacturing resources. The setting allows a built-in mixture of teaching and learning styles to be used, requiring significant utilization of the higher-level thinking skills of synthesis, analysis and evaluation.