> TE Home
> About TE
> Contact Us
> Editorial Info
> E-Mail Update
> IEEE-USA

07.07

Teaching Today's Engineering Students To Be Tomorrow's Entrepreneurs

Today's Engineer recently sat down with G. Kemble Bennett, Ph.D., P.E., vice chancellor of engineering for The Texas A&M University System and dean of the Dwight Look College of Engineering at Texas A&M University, where he leads one of the largest and highest ranked engineering programs in the nation. Dr. Bennett shared with TE insights on the importance of entrepreneurship, and what Texas A&M is doing to make it part of its engineering curriculum. Following is a transcript of that interview.

What is the importance of entrepreneurship in today’s technological work environment and society?

Entrepreneurship is a very important part of the United States. This country’s economic engine over time has been technology. Technology has driven the creation of wealth in this country, which then creates jobs, and with those, the high standard of living we enjoy as Americans. If you look at where those jobs were created, it’s surprising to me that they were not created by large corporations; they’ve been primarily created by companies that have been built by entrepreneurs. The number of corporate executives and leaders who hold engineering degrees is overwhelming. Many people come from the technical side, create these companies to develop their products, which leads to jobs, which in turn lead to a better standard of living for everyone. So I think our capital of the future will continue to be technology.

But if you look at the numbers, and if you look at the United States, there are several interesting factors. One statistic I saw said the top 25 percent of the highest-IQ people in China is greater than the entire population of North America. That means there are a lot of bright people in these other developing countries. If you’ve been to China like I have been, first in the ‘80s and then back again in the new millennium, it’s not the same place. It doesn’t even look like the same country; things are happening. The statistics I read about the numbers of engineers turned out around the globe, which vary and are argued about, indicate that we’re not going to win the sheer numbers game, so as these countries –– China and India in particular –– continue to develop, how do we maintain our strength as a nation? We do it with technology, and with leadership and the management of that technology, and using it wisely. We do it by being inventors, innovators and entrepreneurs.

We must use technology to maintain our leadership role in the world. I don’t think we should do it just to be a world power, but technology adds a lot of muscle to what we do. If we can generate more technology, and provide the leaders who will continue to do that, and have a system of government that fosters innovation, we will be able to compete successfully in the world marketplace. Competition and innovation are valued in our country, and one of our strengths is our system of government that fosters the entrepreneurial spirit.

What positive impact do you feel an entrepreneurial experience will provide undergraduate students?

Many of our students want to take their ideas, inventions and designs to fruition in their own companies. We provide entrepreneurial experience by discipline, and certain disciplines are natural for that. For example, our Engineering Technology and Industrial Distribution Department has courses that focus on entrepreneurship, product design and development, and marketing. Likewise, Biomedical Engineering teaches an elective course in entrepreneurship, because there is so much demand for biomedical devices in the medical field. Our engineers are coming up with all kinds of remarkable designs to improve and enhance the quality of life of individuals.

One of the things we do now is integrate the private sector into our classrooms. Industry partnerships are critical for this. An old faculty member like me stands up in front of a class and says, “This is really important, do you understand it?” and everyone bobs their heads. But when a corporate executive or somebody from industry who is closer to their age group, maybe out in the real world five or 10 years and has been successful, comes in and says, “Here’s what I did and this is why you should listen,” then they’re all glued to the edge of their seats. So we try to introduce our students to entrepreneurship through guest lecture programs throughout the college. With this support and involvement of the private sector, I feel like we’re putting out students today who are getting some of this entrepreneurial spirit. But we haven’t pulled it all together or thought it all through completely, and that’s what we need to start on –– how are we really going to make it work? That’s my interest as dean, seeing that we do this using a well-thought-out plan.

An entrepreneurial skill set is useful if students are going to start their own companies, but how do these skills and spirit benefit those students who are going to have long-term careers inside a large corporation?

Many envision the concept of entrepreneurship as only dealing with new venture start-ups, which I think this is very narrow view of entrepreneurship. What do you want when you hire somebody? You want somebody who can contribute today, someone who is entrepreneurial –– and I can call them entrepreneurial –– who looks at the company, wants to advance their products; wants to enhance the marketplace; understands why they took the job in the first place; has the communication skills; and is able to work in groups and teams. To me, that’s the way business is done today. They have to learn how to work in groups by working in groups –– learning to compromise, learning that you can’t just take over, and, on the other hand, that you can’t sit back and be run over. Your ideas need to get on the table and be considered if you are going to be a valuable member of the team. That’s a skill that comes with understanding the dynamics of people. I believe that you want that in big companies, and that, to me, is part of being an entrepreneur –– knowing how to deal with those various skills and skill sets of people.

I would also argue that if you are going to be entrepreneurial in the company, you need to be exposed to that kind of world, to know that it exists. But the entrepreneur within a large corporation, or “intrepreneur,” probably differs in how much you focus on certain skill sets. I think you want to turn out somebody who can do both and be an asset no matter where they work. Understanding the role of intellectual property and the role of packaging designs, for example, are extremely important. The problems of manufacturing are also critical to success. You can design something beautiful, but building it cost-effectively and bringing it to the marketplace is another thing. I’ve seen great designs that once they’re fielded don’t work in the operational environment. They’re either too heavy or bulky, or don’t function as intended. One example is a chemical suit that was made for emergency first responders. They carried these suits around in the trunks of vehicles in the southern United States, and it didn’t take long for them to deteriorate. Look at all the wasted money that was spent on that. Nobody thought, “Oh, it’s going to sit in a patrolman’s trunk probably for nine months out of the year and not be used, so what’s the heat going to do to it?” There are a lot of questions that need to be asked in packaging designs and making products reliable, safe and functional in the environment they are going to work in. Students don’t always consider these types of issues until they start thinking about marketing and supporting a product. These concepts are not a traditional part of most engineering curricula, but they need to be.

How do you see entrepreneurship being integrated into the Texas A&M Engineering?

Well, that’s the $64,000 question. In my lifetime, in engineering, I’ve seen us go from a very hands-on, design-oriented educational experience, to hardly any design and back again. What we’ve done in engineering, at least at Texas A&M in the past few years, is really put design back into the curriculum.

Our students are now designing in their freshman year. We are integrating their math, physics and chemistry classes to support engineering design. In addition, we have other faculty members working in teams with our engineering faculty so when the students take their freshman engineering courses, they apply the tools they’re learning in their science and math courses to their engineering courses. We’ve built projects into classes and tried to challenge their creative skills a little bit more. The students respond very well to this approach because it allows them to showcase their creative design skills.

The second thing we’ve done is to become actively involved in interdisciplinary design competitions. Whether it’s building a Formula racecar in mechanical engineering or concrete canoe design in civil engineering or submarine design in ocean and civil engineering, in many areas of the college there are national design competitions that bring our students together. These competitions are extracurricular, but the students get so involved in their projects, they bring in so much of what they’re learning, it’s icing on the cake in terms of developing their skills. Our students do well in these design competitions, but more importantly, the competitions give them an appreciation for breadth of disciplines in engineering and how they must come together to be able to solve complex problems. These design competitions require all types of engineering: you have mechanical systems, control systems, electrical systems, embedded computer systems, and more. The whole gamut of skill sets are required to design these systems. And what comes out of that is an appreciation of the fact that your expertise is not enough to function in today’s world. You have to know when to get help and where that help is, and you have to work in teams to be successful in entrepreneurship.

In most of these competitions, you have to bring it in on time and within budget, and that really means that the team has to understand project management. Now, all of a sudden, project management skills become important. Students appreciate that they have to understand many non-engineering concepts. They quickly realize, “We need to go to the business school and get someone involved from there as well.” The result is that these projects that started out primarily in engineering and technology departments are reaching out across campus and also involving people from other disciplines because they are actually going to design and build, on budget and on time.

As I said, the really good design projects are multidisciplinary. If you do one that’s only in your field, I would submit that that does not represent a true engineering design project in the world today. It might be a great classroom exercise to sharpen your skills, but if you haven’t had to bring in people from all these other disciplines, you probably don’t have a real-world design experience.

Let me provide two excellent examples of how we are actively pursuing cross-disciplinary entrepreneurial efforts. The first is the formation of a student business plan competition team composed of four students from the Dwight Look College of Engineering and four MBA students from the Mays Business School. This team has done exceptionally well in contests across Texas, and competed in the Big 12 business competition held in Oklahoma City. The other is a new development project that has teamed undergraduate students from the Biomedical Engineering Department with students from our Electronics and Telecommunications Engineering Technology Programs to design a prototype for an innovative approach to immunizing livestock. Both of these have provided our undergraduates with highly rewarding learning experiences, and driven home many of the fundamental tenets underlying success in engineering innovation and entrepreneurship.

You’ve proposed creating an on-campus incubator for students and faculty. Is that part of your vision as you move engineering entrepreneurship forward at Texas A&M?

When I came in as dean four years ago, I wanted to create a new engineering design building, a real showcase facility that was strictly for design, where the students could have the environment and resources to be creative –– a wide-open space with labs for design, where students and industry could work together to incubate concepts. And then those designs that showed great promise and marketability could actually start incubating into small companies.

So, yes, I saw that building as an incubator, with part of it being used not only for design projects, but also for workshops that would service all of these students doing design, regardless of which academic program they were in. I also hoped that we would integrate other colleges, such as the Mays Business School and the George Bush School of Government and Public Service, with their unique skill sets into this process. That type of interdisciplinary mixing is something we desperately need in engineering.

Something else I thought about was a new concept for dorm designs on campus, where integrated teams could eat, sleep and work together. Perhaps this is somewhat forward-thinking, but I believe we’re going to see more of this in the future. I know some campuses are experimenting with these new dorm concepts to some degree, but we could carry that to a much fuller degree in engineering by bringing various groups together to create an entrepreneurial culture on campus. Of course, all of these ideas were before Texas A&M started the faculty reinvestment program and engineering hired more than 100 new faculty positions to fill and house. But the vision is still there, and with the reinvestment program almost completed, it’s time to dust off this concept and work to make it happen.

Kind of a fraternity/sorority approach to entrepreneurship?

Yes, that’s a good way of looking at it. That is definitely something we could do. But we do need to incubate ideas, and right now we’re using the same labs that we use for instruction. It would be nice to have facilities where design and entrepreneurship are the focus and could blossom. I’d love to see this implemented, and I think this shift in education is something our country has got to do.

How does the private sector play a role in your engineering entrepreneurship vision?

The partnership with industry is a key component to successfully integrating entrepreneurship into the education process. I’ve sat here and talked about engineering, engineering, engineering, but we wouldn’t have good engineering in this country if we did not have good partnerships with industry. Industry serves as our compass in many ways. After all, they are our customers and they are hiring our students. They are the ones out there today dealing with the global marketplace that we in academia read about. They tell me more about what it’s like out there, and what skills are needed, than I could ever glean from sitting behind my desk reading a book, and it’s critical that we listen to what they’re saying.

I spend much of my time talking with companies who want to work with us in various areas, and our most successful design projects have industry involvement. And I am talking about a lot more than just financial help; I am talking about access to their design engineers, access to their talent. When our students do a design project, it is critical that they go through design reviews with project engineers who are working in the field, just like they would do design reviews on the job. While our faculty is excellent at teaching skill sets and giving students technical assistance, I believe we have to bring in the industry people to say whether a student’s solution cuts it or doesn’t. For the students to do a design project and turn it in for a grade at the end of a course, that doesn’t make that project come alive. Industry involvement throughout the process is what makes the project come alive.

As an example, we have a program with NASA called AggieSat. It is based on a team of students from all engineering disciplines and includes students from science and business working on the design of a satellite they may actually fly. Just imagine that you are on this team — you are going to school and you are working on a satellite project that is going to be launched someday and fly in space. These types of experiences are incredibly exciting and motivating, and industry is there every step of the way. More importantly, it is those young men and women that will go out and make a difference in the world one day. I have no doubt in my mind that they are our future capital. They’re going to be your important CEOs, they’re going to be the ones with the drive because they’re motivated when they hit the street.

Several large schools are looking into this, and entrepreneurship is a buzz word right now. Is there anything unique to Texas A&M that makes it well-suited for this?

One of the most unique aspects of Texas A&M is the spirit that our school, our students and our graduates have. Our graduates who are successful entrepreneurs will come to the plate and will be key to our accomplishing our entrepreneurship goals. I’m not going to say we are the only university with this level of former student support, but I would match us against anybody. Additionally, we attract a student body that is very well grounded. Our students want to improve the world, they want to be financially secure, and they want to make a difference, a contribution.

What’s more, we are the third-largest generator of engineering degrees in the nation. That means that we have a major impact on engineering in the United States. So where we go and what we do puts us in a position to have an impact on where education will go, if only through sheer numbers.

So, should we focus on entrepreneurship? Well, it’s on my radar screen because this is too critical to just ignore. If we don’t focus on cultivating an entrepreneurial and innovative spirit in our future engineers, our standard of living as a nation will suffer. We’re only going to win by leveraging what we have; we’re not going to win by numbers. There are too many bright people in other places, so our system of governance and our competitive spirit have to foster this type of development in our students. And if we at Texas A&M do it, and if the other top-ranked engineering schools do it, too, we’re going to start generating momentum. We’re going to start generating the quality of entrepreneurial people that we need to keep this country at the forefront of the global marketplace.

Comments may be submitted to todaysengineer@ieee.org.