ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Experience: Entrepreneurship
Level: Gold
Courses:
ENTR 200: Introduction to Entrepreneurship
ENCH 225L: Chemical Engineering Problem Solving and Experimental Design Lab
Description:
The entrepreneurship classes I took were the core courses as well as an elective, ENCH225L. Through this elective course, I was able to engage in research related to my Grand Challenge. Specifically, my research dealt with reversing copper corrosion which affects the integrity of infrastructure. It plays a crucial role in services such as writing, plumbing, heating/cooling and lighting/roofing of buildings. By researching this, we are able to improve an important resource for growing cities.
This was a full semester project for the ENCH 225L course. Specifically, I worked in a group with 3 other students. Specifically, we researched literature, did the laboratory investigations, created and presented both a poster and oral presentation for this course throughout the semester. This course was 4 credits.
Reflection: Through this course I was able to learn about the chemical engineering first hand and how to propose and investigate a research project. I was able to expand upon my teamwork skills because I worked with three other students. In addition, I learn how to prepare and present both poster and oral presentations to students and faculty.
Program Learning Objectives:
Teamwork: Through this project, I worked with 3 other students in order to develop and conduct the experiments. This required division of labor and working together to make the final presentations as well.
Persistence: Sometime the experiments failed, or we did not have access to the correct equipment. This required us to be patient and persistent when faced with these circumstances.
Integrity: When conducting research, it is important to maintain integrity by ensuring the data you collect is clear and accurately obtained. This can be done by limiting potential sources of inaccuracies due to both instrumental and human errors. It is also important to communicate any issues with the professors before publishing/presenting research. Scientific discovery is integral to the progress of humanity and specifically in this project, we hoped to restore an important resource so it was vital to ensure we communicated accurate and relevant results.
Entrepreneurship Learning Objectives:
Develop strategies for recognizing opportunities and identifying the tools for quality risk assessment:
Through this project, we had to identify an exciting area of research. This was done through researching literature available online in Google Scholar and finding journals and articles published by scientists. After this initial research, we went to our professors to bring up the idea and evaluate if it was worth investigating.
Exhibit skills for communicating ideas in a concise and logical way:
In order to develop the research poster and presentation, it was important to ensure we communicated our findings in a visually appealing and attractive manner. To do this, we captured photos of our research project throughout the semester and developed graphs to make it easier to present quantitative findings.
Work effectively in teams focused on entrepreneurship-related projects:
This was a teamwork exercise. In order to communicate effectively, my team created a groupme for the project. Every week, we would delegate tasks based on strengths. For example, one of us was better at writing so that person would submit the weekly reflections while others were better at MATLAB coding, so they would program.
Additional Learning Objective:
Apply creative and innovative thinking to solve problems:
In the beginning there was an issue with our project in that we were not able to cut the copper sheets effectively because we did not have access to a big metal cutter. Instead, our group had to improvise and work together in order to cut the copper sheets into neat squares using just scissors and teamwork. Obviously, this was not the best way to do this but we were able to solve the issue at hand by making use of our limited resources.
