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1. Exploring the Relationship between Mindfulness and Innovation in Engineering Students.

   Rieken, B.; Schar, M.; Shapiro, S.; Gilmartin, S.; Sheppard, S. (January 2017, Proceedings of the American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference, June 25-28. Columbus, OH.)

   An open, receptive, and curious (mindful) mindset is often cited as important in innovation. Yet, engineering education typically focuses on narrow analytical training at the expense of fostering expansive thinking. To specifically explore the relationship between a mindful attitude (open, receptive, curious) and innovation, we examined the relationship between dispositional mindfulness and innovation self-efficacy in a sample of 1,460 engineering students and recent graduates who completed the Engineering Majors Survey. Using social cognitive theory to frame our analysis, we found that a mindful attitude is correlated with innovation self-efficacy and that students with a highly mindful attitude tend to participate in learning experiences related to design and innovation. These results lay the groundwork for how mindfulness may promote foundational skills for successful entrepreneurship such as innovation, learning, and motivation. 

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2. Career Certainty: Differences Between Career Certain and Uncertain Engineering Students.

   Schadl, B.; Sheppard, S.; Chen, H. (January 2017, Proceedings of the American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference, June 25-28. Columbus, OH.)

   To gain a deeper understanding of the career decisions of undergraduate engineering students, this research paper explores the differences between students who show a high degree of career certainty and those who are rather uncertain about what their professional future should look like. These analyses were based on a dataset from a nationwide survey of engineering undergraduates (n=5,819) from 27 institutions in the United States. The survey was designed with an interest in understanding engineering students’ career pathways. For the purpose of this study, students were designated as either “career uncertain” or “career certain” according to their survey answers. Those two groups were then compared against a variety of background characteristics, past experiences and personality variables. The results suggest that career uncertain and career certain students do not differ on background variables such as gender, age or family income. However, when it comes to students’ past experiences, the percentage of students who had already gained internship experiences during their time in college was significantly higher among career certain students as compared to career uncertain students. As expected, seniors were more certain about their professional future than juniors. Similarly, a higher percentage of career certain students reported talking about their professional future with other students or faculty members more frequently. Furthermore, career certain students were significantly more likely to show a higher level of innovation self-efficacy and engineering task self-efficacy. In addition, career certain students were more likely to have career goals that involved innovation and they also considered several job characteristics as more important than did uncertain students. On average, career certain engineering students were also more certain about staying in engineering one, five and ten years after graduation. Overall, the results of this research suggest that more hands-on experiences and fostering stronger beliefs in their engineering skills can contribute to undergraduates becoming more certain about their future professional careers. 

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3. Extracurricular College Activities Fostering Students’ Innovation Self-efficacy.

   Dungs, C.; Sheppard, S.; Chen, H. (January 2017, Proceedings of the American Society for Engineering Eduation)

   This study examines the relationship between participation in extracurricular college activities and its possible impact on students’ career interests in entrepreneurship and innovation. This work draws from the Engineering Majors Survey (EMS), focusing on innovation self-efficacy and how it may be impacted by participation in various extracurricular college activities. The term self-efficacy as developed by Albert Bandura is defined as “people’s judgment of their capabilities to organize and execute courses of action required to attain designated types of performances” (Bandura, 1986, p.391). Innovation self-efficacy is a variable consisting of six items that correspond to Dyer’s five discovery skills seen as important for innovative behavior. In order to investigate the relationship between participation in certain activities and innovation self-efficacy, the 20 activities identified in the EMS survey were grouped thematically according to their relevance to entrepreneurship-related topics. Students were divided into two groups using K-means cluster analysis according to their innovation selfefficacy (ISE.6) score. Cluster one (C1) contained the students with higher ISE.6 scores, Cluster two (C2) included the students with lower innovation self-efficacy scores. This preliminary research focused on descriptive analyses while also looking at different background characteristics such as gender, academic status and underrepresented minority status (URM). The results show that students in C1 (high ISE.6) have significantly greater interest in starting an organization (78.1%) in comparison to C2 students (21.9%) (X²=81.11, p=.000, Cramer’s V= .124). At the same time, male students reported significantly higher ISE.6 scores (M=66.70, SD=17.53) than female students (M=66.70, SD=17.53) t(5192)=-5.220 p=.000 and stronger intentions to start an organization than female students (15% and 6.1 % respectively). Cluster affiliation representing innovation self-efficacy as well as gender seems to play a role when looking at career interest in entrepreneurship. According to Social Cognitive Career Theory, self-efficacy is influenced by learning experiences. In this work activities referring to hands-on activities in entrepreneurship and innovation are highly correlated with ISE.6 (r=.206, p=.000), followed by non-hands-on exposure to entrepreneurship and innovation. At the same time, students in C1 participated almost twice as often in hands-on activities in entrepreneurship and innovation (28.6%) as compared to students in C2 (15.2%). Interestingly in C1, there were no gender differences in participation in hands-on activities in entrepreneurship and innovation. Overall, female students (M=4.66, SD=2.5) participated in significantly more activities than male students (M=3.9, SD=2.64), t(5192)=9.65 p=.000. All in all, these results reveal interesting insights into the potential benefits of taking part in innovation and entrepreneurship-related activities and their impact on students’ innovation self-efficacy and interests in corresponding careers. 

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4. Entrepreneurial intent of engineering and business undergraduate students

   https://doi.org/10.1002/jee.20283  

   Gilmartin, Shannon K.; Thompson, Marissa E.; Morton, Emily; Jin, Qu; Chen, Helen L.; Colby, Anne; Sheppard, Sheri D. (August 2019, Journal of Engineering Education)

   Abstract BackgroundIn recent years, technological innovation and entrepreneurship have been emphasized in engineering education. There is a need to better understand which individual‐ and contextual‐level factors are related to engineering students' entrepreneurial intentions. Purpose/HypothesisThis study explores individual and contextual predictors of entrepreneurial intent among undergraduate women and men in engineering and business majors. Entrepreneurial intent is defined as the personal importance that students ascribe to starting a new business or organization. Design/MethodThe participants included 518 engineering and 471 business undergraduates from 51 U.S. colleges and universities. We examined relationships first by discipline and then by gender in each discipline using regression models with interaction terms. ResultsInnovation orientation and participation in entrepreneurship activities tied to intent more strongly for engineering students than for business students; in contrast, being at a research institution and selection of novel goals tied to intent more strongly for business students than for their engineering peers. Among engineering students only, being able to switch gears and apply alternative means for reaching one's goal in the face of setbacks was positively related with women's entrepreneurial intent but not with men's. ConclusionsEntrepreneurial intent is a function of individual‐level characteristics and academic and social contexts, with some degree of discipline‐specific effects. Diversifying the community of aspiring engineering entrepreneurs is a critical issue that merits attention by the engineering education community. 

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5. The Making of an Innovative Engineer: Academic and Life Experiences that Shape Engineering Task and Innovation Self-Efficacy.

   Schar, M.; Gilmartin, S.; Rieken, B.; Brunhaver, S.; Chen, H.; Sheppard, S. (January 2017, Proceedings of the American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference, June 25-28. Columbus, OH.)

   This research paper presents the results of a study that uses multivariate models to explore the relationships between participation in learning experiences, innovation self-efficacy, and engineering task self-efficacy. Findings show that many engineering students participated in learning experiences that are typically associated with engineering education, such as taking a shop class or engineering class in high school (47%), taking a computer science (81%) or design/prototyping (72%) class as an undergraduate, working in an engineering environment as an intern (56%), or attending a career related event during college (75%). Somewhat surprisingly, given the rigors of an engineering curriculum, a significant number of students participated in an art, dance, music, theater, or creative writing class (55%), taken a class on leadership topics (47%), and/or participated in student clubs outside of engineering (44%) during college. There also were important differences in rates of participation by gender, underrepresented racial/ethnic minority status, and first generation college student status. Overall prediction of engineering task self-efficacy and innovation self-efficacy was relatively low, with a model fit of these learning experiences predicting engineering task self-efficacy at (adjusted r2 of) .200 and .163 for innovation self-efficacy. Certain patterns emerged when the learning experiences were sorted by Bandura’s Sources of Self-Efficacy. For engineering task self-efficacy, higher participation in engineering mastery and vicarious engineering experiences was associated with higher engineering task self-efficacy ratings. For the development of innovation self-efficacy, a broader range of experiences beyond engineering experiences was important. There was a strong foundation of engineering mastery experiences in the innovation self-efficacy model; however, broadening experiences beyond engineering, particularly in the area of leadership experiences, may be a factor in innovation selfefficacy. These results provide a foundation for future longitudinal work probing specific types of learning experiences that shape engineering students’ innovation goals. They also set the stage for comparative models of students’ goals around highly technical engineering work, which allows us to understand more deeply how “innovation” and “engineering” come together in the engineering student experience. 

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