About 10 years ago, John B. Ochs, a mechanical engineering professor at Lehigh University, began to observe that students in the school's popular undergraduate Capstone program were less interested in working on industry projects as in developing their own ideas.
In recognition of that entrepreneurial impulse among today's students (“permanent and incredibly healthy,” says Ochs), Lehigh launched its Master of Engineering in Technical Entrepreneurship (MTE) in 2012, graduating its first class of 14 entrepreneurs earlier this year.
Now the program has been recognized by the Pittsburgh-based University Economic Development Association as one of the top university economic initiatives in North America.
Product development and company launch are graduation requirements for the MTE program, which features dedicated curriculum, faculty and studio space. “You're going to learn by launching. You're going to figure out what it means to be an entrepreneur by being an entrepreneur,” says Ochs, the MTE director. “It sounds trite, but we firmly believe that you learn by doing.”
Students are immersed for a full 12 months in a tight, skunkworks atmosphere, with courses including intellectual property creation and management, visual thinking, prototyping, modeling and testing, product development and business planning.
The first graduating class has launched startups including Eleanor Kalle, a New York-based jewelry designer; Second Shift Innovations, which creates next-generation tools for first responders; and Venos, which developed a device to attach iPads to MacBooks to create a mobile dual screen.
The second MTE class of 28 will graduate in spring 2014; the program's 10-year goal is to graduate 90 student entrepreneurs and launch 50 new companies each year.
The MTE students come from a wide range of majors, backgrounds and interests, says Ochs. But there is one essential common denominator. “If you're going to be an entrepreneur,” he says, “you have to have passion for what you do because it's going to envelop your life.”
Source: John B. Ochs, Lehigh University
Writer: Elise Vider