The NCIIA: turning students into inventors and entrepreneurs

Can invention be taught? The pursuit of open-ended commercially focused projects provides opportunities for students to use design and problem-solving skills, techniques, and tools in a multi-disciplinary team setting. Through this process, students gain the skills, knowledge, confidence, and commitment to test their inventive and entrepreneurial skills in the world. This paper provides an overview and profile of two courses developed under a program that provides support for the development of new approaches to engaging students with innovation by providing opportunities for the creation of new products and ventures as part of the educational experience. The National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance (NCIIA) is an independent interdisciplinary educational program, supported by The Lemelson Foundation to foster and promote the teaching of invention, innovation, and entrepreneurship by facilitating and supporting collaborative learning structures at colleges and universities nationwide. A major focus of the NCIIA has been engineering education. The two undergraduate engineering programs described here illustrate the diversity of paradigms that can successfully be used to introduce students to independent innovation. The first is the Illinois Institute of Technology's (IIT) "Invention Center," where engineering projects are carried out in the studio environment typical of a fine arts class. Students are coached, rather than lectured, on everything that needs to be done to come up with a successful idea, make a prototype, and develop the legal and business aspects of it. The second, the University of Virginia's Invention and Design course, uses a classroom apprenticeship that is created through the use of active learning modules where students are confronted with open-ended problems. In both programs, ideas must be patentable and lead to a working prototype before a semester's end. In addition, students must deliver a patent description and a business plan, and make a formal presentation before judges from industry. These courses provide an effective approach to meeting ABET Criterion 3 outcome requirements by integrating technical and non-technical aspects of applied innovation in an organic way to encourage creativity, self-reliance, and the emergence of inventive competence. NCIIA grants and resources have supported the development of these courses, and the continuation of the most promising of the student projects emerging from them towards commercialization.