College of Engineering Creates Entrepreneurship Minor



The Ohio State College of Engineering has received a $600,000, multi-year grant from the National Science Foundation to provide entrepreneurship opportunities to students. Highly motivated and talented students will be recruited into the program, called NEWPATH, directly from high school. Each will major in an existing degree program: Computer Science and Engineering, Computer and Information Science or Electrical and Computer Engineering. Each NEWPATH student will also complete an existing interdisciplinary minor in Fisher's program of entrepreneurship. NEWPATH represents collaboration among faculty from the Computer Science and Engineering department, the Electrical and Computer Engineering department and the Fisher College of Business. In addition, two industry-university centers will contribute to the program including the Center for Entrepreneurship at Fisher College of Business and the Center for Enterprise Transformation and Innovation within the College of Engineering. As a community partner, TechColumbus will also play a key role in the endeavor, providing mentors and helping place students in entrepreneurial internships. "The program is a College of Engineering and Computer Science and Engineering led initiative with the strong partnership of Fisher College's Center for Entrepreneurship and TechColumbus," says David Lee, professor of computer science and engineering and primary investigator on this project. NEWPATH, which is slated to begin fall quarter 2007, was instituted because information technology graduates often lack the business and entrepreneurial skills needed to serve as change agents and to understand important business concepts, the industry's needs or a vision of future technology directions. NSF funds such initiatives through a program called CPATH to transform undergraduate computing education through interdisciplinary programs and collaboration between the academic and corporate communities. Three important new elements set the NEWPATH program apart from existing curricula. The NEWPATH program will also feature an intense six-month immersion, immediately prior to graduation, in which students will form small entrepreneurial teams that creates a start-up through all phases of the process such as developing business plans, seeking venture capital, designing and building an information technology product/service and marketing. Students will be mentored by faculty members and industry professionals throughout the program.