A Model of Cross Disciplinary Education, Technology Transfer and Teaching Non-Technical Skills for Engineers

Abstract

Over the past 25 years technology entrepreneurship programs of the Maryland Technology Enterprise Institute (Mtech), a unit of the Clark School of Engineering at the University of Maryland (UM), has evolved from an on-campus incubator for technology-oriented startup companies to a dozen innovative programs in entrepreneurship education, venture creation and industry partnerships, three of which are national models. These programs form a continuum that provides a full range of supportive activities for entrepreneurial endeavors. This continuum can be thought of as a system whose inputs are ideas, concepts and intellectual property (IP), and whose outputs are innovative companies and entrepreneurs and sustainable. Since 1987, these programs have contributed $22B to the economy of Maryland.