In this course, I worked with a team of four other students to solve a real-world problem for an assigned client, using the engineering design process over the course of the semester. Our work involved intensive brainstorming, building and testing physical prototypes, iterating on our designs, documenting progress, incorporating client feedback, and engaging with technical mentors. Through this experience, I developed key skills in team communication, time management, and product development. This project directly connects to my Innovation & Entrepreneurship Certificate, as it challenged me to identify a real need and apply the engineering process to create an innovative, client-driven solution. You can read more about my project here.

Unlike EGR 101L, this course offered the opportunity to work on multiple design challenge problems throughout the semester, each one with different teams of students. I had to learn how to deal with overlapping deadlines for different projects, achieve deliverables in shorter timeframes, and continually apply the engineering methods and skills that I'd learned in previous courses. The final project in this class is to build a Rube Goldberg machine with multiple electrical and mechanical components in each section. This was an especially notable experience because the teams were very large (16 people each), and we all had to coordinate our sections to fit together and interact properly. This course relates to my Innovation & Entrepreneurship Certificate because I developed creative designs, worked on multiple teams, and had to defend the engineering choices I made in poster board presentations.

My other two electives were more engineering oriented, but this course really taught me the basics of business and entrepreneurship. I learned about key business concepts like reading income statements, identifying market fit, targeting a consumer population, and financing techniques. In a team of two other students, I performed qualitative and quantitative analysis of past entrepreneurial ventures through various case studies. I really enjoyed going through the case study results as a class to see if I would have made the right decision had I been in the situation as the entrepreneur. One of the biggest takeaways I had from this course was that as an engineer, I can design an innovative solution to any problem, but it will only be meaningful if there is an actual job to be fulfilled. If people have no need for a product or the right crowd is not targeted, the best ideas could prove to be failures. This class equipped me with the skills to pursue my own business venture and to think critically about problems from a business perspective.