Distinguished faculty members in multiple departments at Kettering University have received about $40,000 each, for a total of $240,000 over the last two years, from the Kern Entrepreneurial Engineering Network (KEEN) to embed and incorporate various aspects of innovation and entrepreneurship mindset into their individual engineering and science courses.

“Our goal as an institution is to help students develop an entrepreneurial mindset regardless of their choice of major,” said Dr. Massoud Tavakoli, professor of Mechanical Engineering and Director of the Innovation to Entrepreneurship program at Kettering. “Whether it’s an engineering, biomedical science, business or liberal studies classroom – we want to make sure that it includes an entrepreneurial tilt so our students can develop a mindset that focuses on identifying opportunities for creating value for the world around them using the technologies that they learn and use every day.”

Dr. Patrick Atkinson is one of seven Kettering University faculty who have received funding from KEEN in the last two years.

Kettering faculty members receiving grants as principle investigators from KEEN are:

• Dr. Michelle Ammerman, Applied Biology
• Dr. Patrick Atkinson, Mechanical Engineering
• Dr. Theresa Atkinson, Mechanical Engineering
• Dr. Gianfranco DiGiuseppe, Mechanical Engineering
• Dr. Daniel Ludwigsen, Physics
• Professor Art Demonte, Business
• Dr. Nozar Tabrizi, Computer Engineering

Established in 2006 with support from the Kern Family Foundation in Milwaukee, KEEN’s mission is to graduate engineers with an entrepreneurial mindset so they can create personal, economic and societal value through a lifetime of meaningful work. The long-term goal is for these new engineers to catalyze a transformation in the workforce and to build economic and technical commerce in their communities.

The individual grants will be used by faculty members to develop new techniques and curriculum components in their classrooms to incorporate entrepreneurship elements such as: identifying opportunities, defining problems, design and system engineering, communications, scaling a business endeavor, marketing and acquiring funding.

“As faculty members, it is our responsibility to open students’ minds to develop something innovative and new,” said Dr. Mohammad Torfeh. “In order to do that, we have to change how we teach and funding from KEEN will help faculty transform their classrooms at Kettering to better prepare students.