The Center for Engineering Design & Entrepreneurship: an evolving facility to support curricular innovations

As the College of Engineering at Penn State University implements changes to achieve its goal of educating world-class engineers, greater numbers of students from first-year through seniors are involved in industry sponsored design projects. In addition, the students are also involved in international design teams, and working collaboratively with Colleges of Business to introduce modern business skills as a integral part of engineering design curriculum. These initiatives are based on a common theme of engaging students in cross-disciplinary problem-based learning opportunities in the context of industry sponsored engineering design projects. The curriculum needed to support these initiatives has been under development since the early 1990s. To support this curricular need, a physical space is developed where the necessary tools for collaboration, design, construction and testing are made available. This facility has evolved from various forms throughout the many decades to support the curricular innovations.