Assistant Professors of Biomedical Engineering Eric Meyer and Mansoor Nasir of Lawrence Technological University (LTU) gave a workshop titled “Medical Leaps & Bounds” at the 2014 Thumb Education & Community Day Conference sponsored by Thumbworks! in Marlette, MI, in May.
Local community, industry, and education participants learned how the entrepreneurial mindset is being fostered in college students through training that has been implemented into courses in the biomedical engineering program at LTU.
The workshop included group activities to practice entrepreneurship skills in the engineering design process, including “Bisociation,” which is an opportunity-recognition technique used to brainstorm ideas. Participants were encouraged to apply the entrepreneurial mindset to their own professions.
The development of entrepreneurship mindset traits and tools has been made possible by LTU’s close relationship with the Kern Entrepreneurship Education Network (KEEN) and long-term funding from the Kern Family Foundation.
“KEEN believes that entrepreneurship is a mindset and that the entrepreneurship process can be formalized,” Meyer explained. “LTU is at the forefront of the entrepreneurial engineering education movement and is recognized nationally for integrating this philosophy into the classroom.”
Meyer and Nasir have been developing entrepreneurship skills modules for several courses in the biomedical engineering curriculum. They are using current, real-world opportunities created by the “Quantified Self” social movement to motivate students to practice entrepreneurial-minded learning (EML) techniques.
The “Quantified Self” examples were used to demonstrate how technology convergence and miniaturization in hand-held devices have made it much easier to measure and track personal health and wellness parameters that can be utilized in biomedical testing. This movement is creating many opportunities to develop new devices, products, and services, including mobile apps.