Bringing Entrepreneurial Mindset to Engineering
A student works on the race car frame for the Formula SAE Collegiate Design Series. The interdisciplinary project calls for students to create a business plan and design and build a prototype for a
startup company.
A grant of $222,500 from the Kern Family Foundation will enable Lafayette to lay the groundwork for a cross-trained engineering initiative that will introduce engineering students to the knowledge, perspectives, skills, values, and mental agility that contribute to an entrepreneurial mindset.
This fosters thinking beyond the technical challenges of a problem to consider its humanistic, artistic, economic, and societal dimensions. The initiative builds on Lafayette’s success in providing generations of engineering students with an outstanding technical education coupled with abundant opportunities for immersion in the liberal arts.
“As technical knowledge has become more readily available, it is more relevant and valuable than ever for students to have a combination of technical knowledge and broad thinking,” says Scott Hummel, Jeffers Director of the Engineering Division. “This combination gives Lafayette engineering students a competitive edge in a globally competitive talent marketplace.”