Resumen de How student characteristics shape engineering pathways to entrepreneurship education
Aileen Huang Saad, Sergio Celis
As higher education works to meet the challenges of the changing economy, engineering programs have significantlyincreased their programs in entrepreneurship as a mechanism for fostering 21st century skills in a diverse workforce. In aneffort to balance the rigorous academic technical requirements of an engineering degree, entrepreneurship programsleverage both curricular and co-curricular programming, offering students different paths to entrepreneurship develop-ment. However, little is known about the distribution of these opportunities amongst different groups of students. Thepurpose of this investigation is to examine whether the pathways to entrepreneurship education are influenced by studentcharacteristics. Institution and participation data of 1,018 undergraduate students were collected from an entrepreneur-ship program anchored in a large, Midwest, public research university, college of engineering, center for entrepreneurship.Logistic regressions were used to examine the differences and similarities between students enrolling an entrepreneurshipcurricular program and their participation in co-curricular activities. Our data indicates that gender, nationality, and gradepoint average (GPA) are key factors in determining the type of entrepreneurship participation students choose to pursue inthe university environment. We also found evidence of the curricular program acting as a gateway to engagement withentrepreneurship beyond the classroom. These data suggest that entrepreneurship programs should be cognizant of theinfluencers as well as the student pathways when developing programs to attract a diverse student base.
