Date Approved

4-28-2025

Embargo Period

4-28-2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) Engineering Education

Department

Experiential Engineering Education

College

Henry M. Rowan College of Engineering

Advisor

Cheryl Bodnar, Ph.D.

Committee Member 1

Prateek Shekhar, Ph.D.

Committee Member 2

Kaitlin Mallouck, Ph.D.

Committee Member 3

Cassandra Jamison, Ph.D.

Committee Member 4

Mary Stachle, Ph.D.

Keywords

Assessment;Concept Maps;Engineering Education;Entrepreneurial Mindset;Narrative Inquiry;Triad of Entrepreneurial Mindset

Disciplines

Engineering

Abstract

The Entrepreneurial Mindset (EM) has been acknowledged as beneficial for engineers entering the workforce in a constantly advancing society. With an EM, professional engineers are better equipped to be innovative, creative, and translate ideas into reality. However, assessing how students develop an EM has been plagued with difficulties, mainly due to the discrepancy in EM definitions between different fields. This dissertation applies three EM assessment methods guided by one theoretical framework: the Triad of EM, which contextualizes EM into cognitive, behavioral, and emotional dimensions. Chapter 3 of this work analyzes EM across multiple years of an undergraduate engineering curriculum using a self-report survey, the ESEMA. Chapter 4 uses both quantitative and qualitative methods to categorically analyze first year and senior students’ EM concept maps. Finally, Chapter 5 of this work uses the qualitative method of narrative inquiry to formulate and assess biomedical engineering research students’ stories of their engineering experiences and identify how these stories capture EM elements. This dissertation found that students mainly focus their understanding of EM within the cognitive and behavioral dimensions, and only touch on the emotional dimension in their personal stories. Therefore, educators and researchers should consider emphasizing the importance of emotional EM elements in future engineering EM interventions.

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