Dr. Richard Dino addresses MBA and engineering students in Management 5634: Opportunity Generation, Assessment & Promotion

About the Entrepreneurship
Senior Design Project (ESDP)

About the Entrepreneurship Senior Design Project (ESDP) During the 2008-09 academic year, the schools of Engineering and Business launched the ESDP program with the objective of adding business tools to the undergraduate engineering tool belt. The program involves two primary facets: (i) two MBA-level entrepreneurship courses, taken the junior and senior years, and (ii) a culminating senior design project that pairs engineering seniors with MBA-candidate teammates.

The ESDP program exposes engineering students to core business principles and nurtures their awareness of the entrepreneurial approach to capturing opportunities. In turn, participating MBA students are exposed to the engineering perspective, which allows them to better understand and appreciate the more analytical framework within which engineers conceive new ideas, solve technical challenges and improve upon existing products.

The marriage of the two disciplines—engineering and business—on project teams requires the students to cast aside preconceptions, quickly forge a common “language” and apply the canons of engineering and business toward successful technological commercialization.

Multi-Terrain Wheelchair

This project involves development of an apparatus that allows a wheelchair-bound individual to traverse rough or uneven terrain, climb inclines, control speed on downward slopes, and maintain handsfree, stationary stability on slopes throughout their normal day.