Work in progress — Measuring and enhancing the entrepreneurial mindset of freshman engineering students

Much has been made of the need for our future generations to be more entrepreneurial; that is, creative or innovative, with the ability to act on opportunities. Establishing an entrepreneurial mindset in college students is important to sustain the competitiveness of US economic organizations and the socioeconomic lifestyle of the US population through value and job creation. Despite entreaties to be more entrepreneurial, assessing and methods to nurture creativity and innovation, especially in our technically capable college graduates, remains an elusive goal. The objective of this research is to measure the entrepreneurial mindset of freshman engineering students and to evaluate whether interventions that are introduced through the first year change that mindset and assist engineering students in becoming more entrepreneurial. The first stage of this research is to measure the entrepreneurial mindset of first-year engineering students and how it changes over their freshman experiences, potentially enhanced by interventions specifically aimed at changing freshmen engineers' attitudes, knowledge and skills relative to creativity and innovation.