ENGINEERING UNLEASHED FELLOWSHIP HONORS PROFESSOR FOR HER CREATIVE APPROACH TO INTEGRATING ENTREPRENEURIAL MINDSET INTO TEACHING
T
he Engineering Unleashed Faculty Development Program, presented by the Kern Entrepreneurial Engineering Network (KEEN), highlights entrepreneurially minded learning as central to the development of graduates prepared to meet the challenges and opportunities of a rapidly changing world. Each year, the program attracts more than 200 engineering and STEM faculty who create resources that will help them and intercollegiate colleagues advance the mission to integrate the entrepreneurial mindset into practices that benefit their students, their institutions and greater society. As part of the workshop, participants identify potential projects and hone their ideas with coaches for up to one year, after which select faculty are nominated and named Engineering Unleashed Fellows. The 2020 cohort of fellows includes Assistant Teaching Professor Dr. Deeksha Seth, Department of Mechanical Engineering. Known for her work on interactive robots that can present integrated biology and engineering principles to K-12 students in classrooms and museums, Dr. Seth also finds ways of incorporating creativity into her Villanova courses and undergraduate assignments. For one of her two Engineering Unleashed projects, she employs a Saturday Night Live skit involving a Christmas sweater to communicate the importance of following the design process, understanding the client and their needs, establishing clear objectives, and evaluating outcomes based on those objectives. In Dr. Seth’s second Engineering Unleashed project, she assigns student teams state-of-the-art innovations, such as 3D printers, drones or virtual reality goggles. Students are tasked with: • Researching to understand the innovation’s applications and underlying technology • Creating a concept map that connects each of the Mechanical Engineering courses in the curriculum to the product’s development
• •
onnecting to other engineering disciplines C (e.g., civil, electrical, computer, etc.) Relating to a non-engineering academic discipline (e.g., business, political science, social science or natural science)
“The purpose is to increase awareness and appreciation among Mechanical Engineering students about how various ME core courses, engineering disciplines and nonengineering academic disciplines connect to create successful innovations that solve societal problems,” Dr. Seth explains. “An engineer/designer in the 21st century should not just be good at mathematics, technical and analytical things but also be well-versed in their ability to view engineering problems in a larger, societal context; understand how to collaborate and communicate with people from outside their field; and identify and appreciate the role others will play. Engineers don’t work in a bubble—all breakthrough innovations envelope multiple branches of engineering and multiple academic disciplines.”
“The purpose is to increase awareness and appreciation among Mechanical Engineering students about how various ME core courses, engineering disciplines and non-engineering academic disciplines connect to create successful innovations that solve societal problems.”
