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This paper focuses on how former collegiate student entrepreneurs define failure and compares their definitions with how academic literature has traditionally defined entrepreneurial failure. The article examines the context by which collegiate student entrepreneurs, and more specifically student entrepreneurs who studied an engineering discipline, start their venture, and how that influences their perceptions of what entrepreneurial failure is. Entrepreneurial failure and its importance to the field of entrepreneurship is discussed almost as frequently as entrepreneurial success. In fact, learning from failure and learning to fail quickly as a means to assist in advancing toward success are often discussed as fundamental key attributes of successful entrepreneurs. Despite this, factors that influence and contribute to entrepreneurial success and how to increase entrepreneurial success through support mechanisms are far more understood than methods that would help support entrepreneurs in learning from failure, or finding ways to fail early and often in a way that helps them as opposed to discouraging or demoralizing them. Given the rapid increase and interest within colleges of engineering in introducing and exposing students to entrepreneurial experiences, and also in developing programs that help students start entrepreneurial ventures, it is timely to better understand the experiences of these student entrepreneurs, particularly the largest percentage of them who started ventures that failed. While the importance of learning from failure is often repeated in the literature, this paper highlights distinct differences between how collegiate entrepreneurs define failure, compared with more traditionally researched non-collegiate entrepreneurs, and also outlines how the various contexts by which students become involved in an entrepreneurial endeavor influences their perception of how failure is defined. 

This paper focuses on how former collegiate student entrepreneurs define failure and compares their definitions with how academic literature has traditionally defined entrepreneurial failure. The article examines the context by which collegiate student entrepreneurs, and more specifically student entrepreneurs who studied an engineering discipline, start their venture, and how that influences their perceptions of what entrepreneurial failure is. Entrepreneurial failure and its importance to the field of entrepreneurship is discussed almost as frequently as entrepreneurial success. In fact, learning from failure and learning to fail quickly as a means to assist in advancing toward success are often discussed as fundamental key attributes of successful entrepreneurs. Despite this, factors that influence and contribute to entrepreneurial success and how to increase entrepreneurial success through support mechanisms are far more understood than methods that would help support entrepreneurs in learning from failure, or finding ways to fail early and often in a way that helps them as opposed to discouraging or demoralizing them. Given the rapid increase and interest within colleges of engineering in introducing and exposing students to entrepreneurial experiences, and also in developing programs that help students start entrepreneurial ventures, it is timely to better understand the experiences of these student entrepreneurs, particularly the largest percentage of them who started ventures that failed. While the importance of learning from failure is often repeated in the literature, this paper highlights distinct differences between how collegiate entrepreneurs define failure, compared with more traditionally researched non-collegiate entrepreneurs, and also outlines how the various contexts by which students become involved in an entrepreneurial endeavor influences their perception of how failure is defined. 

The purpose of this paper is to describe the development of a set of scales intended to measure self-efficacy and mindset relating to advanced manufacturing. The scales were developed as part of a larger National Science Foundation funded project intended to create a set of online course and modules about advanced manufacturing. These courses and modules are intended to be completed by a variety of learners, including community-college students, 4-year university students, industry professionals, and informal learners who are looking to advance their skills. The scales will ultimately be used as measures to gauge the impact of the instructional activities being created as part of the NSF project.