Rethinking the Classroom

This article discusses that to better engage students, professors are integrating active learning methods into their biomedical classes. The goal is for students to develop entrepreneurial skills to aid students in thinking outside the box, using their developing technical skills to develop innovative solutions. Engineering programs are bringing the entrepreneurial mindset to younger students, often based on the definition used by the Kern Entrepreneurial Engineering Network. Sponsored by the Kern Family Foundation, KEEN is a collaboration of 31 U.S. universities with the goal of supporting entrepreneurial skills in undergraduate engineering and technical students. KEEN says the entrepreneurial mindset has three critical components: curiosity, connections, and creating value. At Clarkson University in Potsdam, New York, mechanical engineering assistant professor Laurel Kuxhaus is working with a KEEN grant to integrate active learning into sophomore-level studies.