(61c) Integrating Entrepreneurial Mindset and Sustainability Concepts into Engineering Design

As a capstone design instructor, I observed that students have trouble connecting basic concepts from lower class levels and global and societal impacts to their design project. Through KEEN Engineering Unleashed Fellowship, I introduced concept maps, stakeholder and sustainability concepts in senior capstone design class, followed by activities in Fall 2024. These activities include developing concepts maps, role play activity, and decision-making exercise.

For concept map assignment was assigned early in the semester after projects are assigned and are asked to individually come up with list of topics and questions that are needed to be answered through the project and then as a group to develop a project concept map to formulate the problem statement, specifications and explore all concepts and connections that are related to the project. As teams work on the design project through the semester students revise the concept map and submit a revised concept map along with their proposal at the end of the semester.

In order to consider the impact of engineering solutions in global, economic, environmental, and societal contexts, a role play activity is designed. For this activity, each student is assigned a role for town-hall meeting to discuss concerns, issues and communication about development of stem cell therapy manufacturing site in a community.

The role play activity is followed by a decision-making exercise where students need to finalize the site location based on economics (net present value) and social impact. Along with the construction costs and taxes at each location to calculate the cash flow diagram, teams are given social impact of construction of facility at each location is provided and teams are asked to determine suitable location based on their priorities.

In Spring 2025, I had similar activities for freshman class to introduce these concepts early on. In these presentation, preliminary data and student feedback collected from these two semesters will be presented.