Exploring the Impacts of Entrepreneurial Experiences in Biomedical Engineering Research Experiences for Undergraduate Programs

This research paper describes the entrepreneurial experiences of biomedical engineering (BME) undergraduate students participating in a summer research program. The field of BME requires advanced knowledge and skills across disciplines to keep up with rapid societal innovation. Research has investigated the importance of having an entrepreneurial mindset (EM) as a crucial part of a biomedical engineer's success, including their ability to make interdisciplinary connections, and understand the needs of others. EM is commonly implemented into undergraduate curricular settings, but EM can also be developed through undergraduate research settings, where students get hands-on experience with the research process through mentorship, laboratory skills, and data analysis. With support from the Kern Entrepreneurial Engineering Network (KEEN), we developed a Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program focused on BME student EM development. As part of the program, a subset of students are partnered with university-affiliated BME companies as summer research interns, where they gain research experience in an industry setting. These students were called entrepreneurial REU (eREU) fellows. EM was incorporated into professional development sessions built into the programs that all students attended: 8 eREU and 43 traditional REU fellows across three institutions. Both traditional REU and eREU students were asked to complete a pre- and post-program survey, including the Engineering Student Entrepreneurial Mindset Assessment (ESEMA) survey, which has associated validity evidence. These surveys asked students to provide insight into their program experiences and those experiences' impact on students' future plans. We quantitatively analyzed the pre- and post-data using independent samples t-tests, where we determined that students tend to show statistically significant increases in many areas, including confidence in skills such as research design and laboratory expertise. When analyzing our results by institution, we found that students at institutions with an eREU program rated themselves statistically significantly higher in areas such as confidence in the ability to work in industry, conduct cutting-edge research, and contribute to the research field. Students in programs with eREU fellows were also overall more interested in their work. In addition to evaluating scale items, we analyzed students' open-ended responses to multiple survey questions, where we showed that the eREU and REU programs allowed students to solidify their post-graduate plans that generally consisted of seeking higher education, pursuing careers in research, and entering the field of medicine. Students reported having an overall positive experience with particular positive associations with the support they received from mentors and fellow students. This study identifies the successes and setbacks of an eREU program designed to facilitate the development of EM in BME students. Based on the results of this study, we look forward to future iterations of this program that can give more students the opportunity to participate in the programming, reach out to more institutions, and continue to encourage BME-EM development. We expect that these results will provide insight into how BME students feel about their research experiences and how it contributes to their development of EM. This will allow for the identification of areas of further improvement to EM interventions in BME research contexts.