November 8, 1995

N.C. State program encourages entrepreneurial engineers

Engineering students in a unique course at N.C. State University are working to fill empty niches in the high-tech marketplace.

The Engineering Entrepreneurs Program (EEP) teaches development, organization and survival skills for small entrepreneurial companies, particularly emphasizing new concepts and products, and prepares students for the 21st-century workplace.

The program is sponsored by the Southeastern University and College Coalition for Engineering Education (SUCCEED) Center for Engineering Practice and directed by Dr. Thomas K. Miller III, professor of electrical and computer engineering and assistant dean for information and technology in the College of Engineering.

"I was inspired by the Senior Design Program in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department and the fact that more than half the students rated it as the best course they had taken at N.C. State," said Miller, who started EEP in 1993. "I was looking for a way to move that positive experience down to all students."

Engineering undergraduates at all levels can enroll and continue for several semesters. Seniors adopt team leadership roles, delegating responsibility to team members and defining goals. Team members who stay with the program for several semesters eventually serve as company leaders.

Students organize into groups of 5-20; create and develop high-tech "companies;" give the companies names, design a product, and investigate the marketplace. Past teams have developed an on-body motion analysis system, interactive tutorial software for students and engineers, and a 3-D computer action/adventure game. The companies sometimes carry over from one semester to the next and undergo personnel changes, while others simply "go out of business."

The drive to bring a business venture to fruition is nurtured by the EEP course, which adopts a success-oriented approach. Grades are based on actual company performance, not traditional tests. Students sign contracts delineating their goals to their "managers": team leaders contract with faculty advisors and team participants contract with team leaders.

The class does not follow the conventional lecture format but meets as a weekly seminar series of speakers such as company founders, manufacturing engineers, attorneys and venture capitalists. The seminars help ground the students in reality through discussions of entrepreneurial success stories, marketing strategies, legal issues and more. During three of the class periods, students make formal progress reports to their peers.

Additionally, each team meets once a week with a faculty advisor who monitors progress, offers advice and helps troubleshoot. When Dr. Ben O'Neal, professor of electrical and computer engineering, met recently with the three leaders of a team developing an athletic pace setter, he asked a question related to safety issues. The students answered with a "probably" scenario, but O'Neal made the point that "probably" wasn't good enough.

The three seniors--Kenny Walker, Larry Craven and Scott Moore--lead Pace Setter Athletic Training Technology, a group designing a computer program coupled with a lighting system that helps runners gauge whether they are on pace with a pre-set time per lap . Though the technical requirements seem challenging, Craven said the more demanding task is to manage the six team members, determine the level of work for each and divide work fairly. These are skills the students will find indispensable when starting their own companies, working in small business or even taking jobs in bigger companies.

"There's a trend toward a more entrepreneurial approach in the larger companies: employees organized as teams with autonomy and complete responsibility for the success of the product," Miller said.

Entrepreneurism is a timely subject for students, Miller added, because of increasing opportunities in small companies for engineers and the recent downsizing in bigger companies. All job growth recently, he said, has occurred in smaller businesses. The larger companies, though, can reap the benefits of the program as well. Since the beginning, IBM has supported the program by supplying equipment and personnel .

Kirk Preiss, an advisory programmer with IBM, knows why entrepreneurial engineering students help big business.

"The entrepreneur's program provides a vehicle for sharpening the student's skills in business and team work as well as specific industry technical skills," Preiss said. "The value of the program for IBM is that it provides new student hires whose skills better match our needs, gives us a chance to see how students perform in 'real world' situations and provides very useful input and ideas as we develop standards-based solutions to satisfy marketplace needs. "In short," Preiss said, "the program takes a giant step towards bridging the gap between university academic development and industry skills development."

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