In 2014, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology received a grant from the Kern Family Foundation as part of the Kern Entrepreneurial Engineering Network to develop for engineering students entrepreneurial minded learning (EML) opportunities that foster an entrepreneurial mindset and enterprising attitudes. Rose-Hulman President James Conwell said that the grant—combined with the goals and mission of the institution—would play an important role in preparing graduates to positively contribute to the American workforce. This grant has supported a number of educational initiatives at Rose-Hulman, such as engaging faculty in multidisciplinary groups to create EML-infused courses in each academic discipline, including the humanities and social sciences. Rose-Hulman has also developed a new living-learning community, the Engineering Student Community Actively Learning Advanced Technical Entrepreneurship (ESCALATE), in which 50 first-year students who live and take courses together are connected to student and alumni mentors.
To assess the impact of their efforts to infuse EML initiatives throughout the institution both in and outside the classroom, in their NSSE 2015 administration, Rose-Hulman appended the First-Year Experiences and Senior Transitions Topical Module. A number of items in this module were identified as having the potential to measure progress toward EML goals—particularly, in the senior students’ section of the module, the items related to entrepreneurial skills, self-employment, and starting your own business. The module findings are serving as benchmarks as Rose-Hulman extends EML initiatives across the institution, with plans to readminister the module in 2018.
Rather than wait for the 2018 data for longitudinal comparisons, however, Rose-Hulman chose to use the existing data to examine what was already happening on their campus. Results from the module’s first-year experience section, for example, gave insight into the impact of College and Life Skills—a course designed to help first-year students make a smooth transition from high school and to introduce them to important resources and individuals at Rose-Hulman. Compared to first-year students at peer institutions, the results showed that Rose-Hulman students were much more likely to seek additional information for course assignments when they didn’t understand the material and to ask instructors for help when they struggled with course assignments.
Rose-Hulman has also been working to be more intentional in how data are shared across campus. For example, to address some challenges in using the Major Field Report as a small institution with most students in engineering programs, Rose-Hulman used the Report Builder–Institution Version to break down the findings by specific engineering majors. Each academic program received its own individualized report including institution-wide findings, departmental findings, departmental comparisons to other U.S. institutions, and data use resources. Supporting greater use of NSSE results at the program-level and outlining a plan to employ student engagement results to monitor the infusion of EML have been effective approaches for making data use more widespread at Rose-Hulman.
