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  • 标题:Cross-level, cross-disciplinary, cross-cultural collaborations in action: a public service educational initiative integrating health, engineering and entrepreneurship.
  • 作者:Zidek, Lisa ; Kauanui, Sandra King ; Haytko, Diana L.
  • 期刊名称:Academy of Educational Leadership Journal
  • 印刷版ISSN:1095-6328
  • 出版年度:2012
  • 期号:January
  • 语种:English
  • 出版社:The DreamCatchers Group, LLC
  • 摘要:QAccording to a recent report of the AACSB International Task Force on Business Schools and Innovation (2010), a business school's mission should include fostering innovation. One of the models suggests that a way to integrate innovation is to develop cross-disciplinary collaborations both within and outside of the Business school. This paper outlines such collaboration. The program includes students at three levels of education: stage 1 involves high school students, stage 2 involves undergraduate engineering students and the final stage involves MBA students in entrepreneurship. The project focus for all three groups is on helping the community of Calhuitz, Guatamala.
  • 关键词:College faculty;College teachers;Developing countries;Engineering;Entrepreneurship;Health education;High school students;High schools;Multiculturalism

Cross-level, cross-disciplinary, cross-cultural collaborations in action: a public service educational initiative integrating health, engineering and entrepreneurship.


Zidek, Lisa ; Kauanui, Sandra King ; Haytko, Diana L. 等


INTRODUCTION

QAccording to a recent report of the AACSB International Task Force on Business Schools and Innovation (2010), a business school's mission should include fostering innovation. One of the models suggests that a way to integrate innovation is to develop cross-disciplinary collaborations both within and outside of the Business school. This paper outlines such collaboration. The program includes students at three levels of education: stage 1 involves high school students, stage 2 involves undergraduate engineering students and the final stage involves MBA students in entrepreneurship. The project focus for all three groups is on helping the community of Calhuitz, Guatamala.

In spring 2009, Global Public Service Academies (GPSA) issued a request for proposals titled Innovative Experiences to Promote Science, Engineering and Math Majors to High School Students Self-Identifying as Being Interested in Health Careers. Faculty from Florida Gulf Coast University's (FGCU) Bioengineering and Nursing programs collaborated to submit a proposal for a study abroad experience for high school students. FGCU engineering faculty were interested in the grant opportunity as a potential resource for finding future student design projects to be used in an upper level undergraduate class, which would incorporate challenges of international engineering design. The faculty members were specifically interested in design projects for a developing country. Since none of the interested engineering faculty had experience with international programs, a nursing faculty member was asked to join the grant team as she had experience taking college students to Guatemala as well as Peace Corps experience in Guatemala. The nursing faculty member specialized in maternal and child care as well as health care delivery in the developing world.

The grant was awarded to FGCU for a four year GPSA summer program. The engineering faculty would deliver an engineering design curriculum for high school students through a course entitled "Problem Solving and Design for Developing Countries". Included in the curriculum is the engineering design process and needs assessment. The nursing faculty would teach the high school students how to conduct health assessments on pregnant women and children. The final grant team consisted of three engineering faculty members and one nursing faculty member. The goal of this paper is to discuss how this project is being implemented in order to demonstrate how different schools, programs and colleges can work together not just to benefit themselves but also to engage in a type of social entrepreneurship, benefiting others throughout the process.

BACKGROUND

The recent AACSB International Task Force report points out that innovation is needed more than ever to reenergize our economy and add value to our society. Utilizing a new conceptual framework for education, they suggest Business Schools can be a vehicle for innovation through new process and product design. New product design must use innovative processes to be successful and sustainable. The recommendation is for Business Schools to integrate innovation into their learning outcomes whenever possible, which will require academics to link with communities. The challenge in management education is to design new curriculum to support the gap between innovation and implementation. The report suggests various models universities can utilize to support innovative thinking in their curriculum. One of these is teaching managers communication, collaboration and ways to build bridges between various fields and industries. In this paper, we present an example of how a project was designed to utilize students at various stages of education (high school, undergraduate and graduate) to develop the skill sets of innovation and implementation among different colleges in one University. The design provides students a valuable learning experience, while seeking to add value to society through learning by doing.

As mentioned, the initial goal of the project and the grant was to get high school students interested in science, engineering and math. It is a well-documented fact that students in the United States are falling behind other countries in terms of both their performance and their interest in these areas (Hanushek, Peterson & Woessmann, 2010). However, as the project was being developed, it became clear that the engineering aspect would involve helping people in a third world country. Many Universities, including FGCU, are focusing on sustainability in their missions for the next century. One aspect of this focus includes social sustainability. We have all heard the Chinese proverb "give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime." Sustainability with respect to this project would suggest that designing the engineering solution is not enough. The people must be taught how to create and market these solutions for the long term. In addition, because these solutions improve society as a whole, they are considered the outcomes of "social entrepreneurship." This is where engineering and the business school come together.

New business ventures created from the exploitation of opportunities to help relieve social ills, lessen the loss of natural resources and build sustainable futures is believed to be creating a new generation of mission-based social entrepreneurs (Neck, Brush & Allen, 2008). A recent study found that science and engineering students who took an entrepreneurship course raised their attitudes and their overall entrepreneurship intentions. The inspiration the students developed to start their own businesses was seen as the most influential benefit (Souitaris, Zerbinati, & Al-Laham, 2007).

In September, 2010, Harvard Business Review asked the question: Can Entrepreneurs Save the World? "Working together, corporations and social entrepreneurs can reshape industries and solve the world's toughest problems," (Drayton & Budlinich, 2010). These authors term individual entrepreneurs who focus on helping others while also making money "the citizen sector." They believe that the citizen sector is creating jobs three times as fast as the private sector. They claim that the success of collaborations between the citizen sector (not for profit) and the private sector will succeed by focusing on creating real economic value as well as social value. Entrepreneurs play a central role in finding the solutions; driving economic growth and helping hundreds of millions of people worldwide (Thompson & MacMillan, 2010). They claim that the management challenges associated with producing and marketing goods and services at the bottom of the economic food chain include imperfect markets, uncertain prices and costs, nonexistent or unreliable infrastructure, weak or absent formal government, untested technology and unpredictable responses. Yet, interestingly enough, entrepreneurs in emerging markets start 25% more companies than their U.S. counterparts do, and their firms have a higher survival rate (Habiby & Coyle, Jr., 2010). The authors' claim that today's entrepreneurs are anywhere in the world and can create value with relatively little capital.

THE CURRENT COLLABORATION

The project presented in this paper describes a collaboration designed to get high school students interested in science and engineering, while getting everyone (undergraduate engineering students and MBA Entrepreneurship students) interested in social entrepreneurship and solving real problems for real people in a third world country.

The Initial Project: Stage 1

The program included a pre-trip experience for high school students on the FGCU campus for two days, followed by a three and half week visit in Calhuitz, Guatemala, ending with a two day post trip experience on the FGCU campus. The project was funded through support from GPSA, and partnering with Curamerica (an organization dedicated to healing communities, one person at a time), to establish a long-term partnership with FGCU to improve health services and to help develop the economy through entrepreneurial engineering projects within the community of Calhuitz near Huehuetenango (located approximately twenty hours northwest of Guatemala City). The objectives of the experience were for high school students to understand and apply the initial steps of the design process and to be knowledgeable of sustainability and universal design issues, especially in developing countries.

Stage 2: The Engineering Curriculum

The original intent of the program was to teach high school students about engineering using the engineering design process to identify client needs for assistive devices. In addition, the identified needs would be used in undergraduate engineering design classes to provide international projects for the engineering students. Two courses were developed to provide undergraduate engineering majors the opportunity to be involved in designing solutions to be implemented in Guatemala based upon the results of the high school students' summer experience. The first course: "Engineering Service Learning" was offered in the fall, 2010 semester. Engineering Service Learning promotes the concept of social responsibility of the engineering profession. Service to the community is considered fundamental to the success and growth of the engineering profession. A driving factor in the course is to increase student awareness of engineering in society. Students in Engineering Service Learning are expected to use the engineering design process to identify a community based need, work with a client to identify design criteria and constraints, develop alternative solutions and prepare a basic business plan for the desired solution. Outcomes for this course include: an ability to function on and assume leadership roles in diverse, multidisciplinary teams; ability to communicate effectively, especially in an interdisciplinary environment; an understanding of entrepreneurship and the ability to write a business plan; and an ability to define a community problem and to use the engineering design process to deliver a solution.

The second engineering course, "Engineering Entrepreneurship," is the follow-up course to Engineering Service Learning. During Engineering Entrepreneurship students take the design proposed at the end of Engineering Service Learning and continue the design process, specifically design, test and implement. At the end of the semester the students are expected to deliver a fully documented product or process to the client. The course is focused on turning the proposed solution not only into a working product or process, but also developing the concept into a business model. The course is structured such that the students are expected to spend time outside of class working with the client to test, revise and retest proposed solutions. Class time is used to acquaint the engineering students with basic business concepts necessary to write an abbreviated business plan. Outcomes for Engineering Entrepreneurship include: an ability to design a system, component, or processes to meet desired engineering needs within realistic constraints such as economic, environmental, social, political, ethical, health and safety, regulatory, manufacturability, and sustainability; an ability to function on and assume leadership roles in diverse, multidisciplinary teams; an understanding of professional and ethical responsibility; an ability to communicate effectively, especially in an interdisciplinary environment; the broad education necessary to understand the impact of engineering solutions in a rapidly changing global, economic, environmental, and societal context; a knowledge of contemporary issues; an understanding of entrepreneurship and business plans; an ability to define a community problem and to use the engineering design process to deliver a solution; and an ability to explain basic concepts in management, business, public policy, and leadership.

Stage 3: The MBA Business Plan Development Curriculum

While designing solutions for the Guatemalan's is an admirable objective, the challenge remains to determine whether these solutions are viable. In other words, are the solutions feasible? Can the products be made efficiently and effectively in the community so that there are long term benefits? The goal of the MBA business plan course is to work with the engineering student to analyze the resulting cost of the devices and implementation plans. At the end of the spring semester, the MBA students, along with the undergraduate engineer students, are expected to deliver a full business plan to assess the feasibility of the new product design. The plan can ultimately be used to attract external stakeholders (investors, partners and/or private and government-funded grant awarding agencies).

The MBA course learning objectives includes an ability to: identify the major components of a business plan; investigate and analyze opportunities to start a new entrepreneurial venture; identify the environmental factors (social, market, economic, technological and product data) pertinent to the new business; identify factors involved in determining the location of a proposed business; conduct an in-dept market analysis and design a financially feasible marketing plan for the new start-up; differentiate and evaluate which legal forms are appropriate for a start-up business; create a proactive plan for the treatment of the ethical issues facing the new business and to create and analyze projected financial alternatives for the initial start-up and operations of a new business.

RESULTS TO DATE

This project is to be completed in Calhuitz, Guatemala. In order to understand the context, it is necessary to share some basic statistics on the area:

* Guatemala has the third highest infant and child mortality rate in the western hemisphere."

* Huehuetenango is considered the "triangle of death" because it has the highest rates of infant and child mortality and malnutrition in the country of Guatemala.

* Sixty eight percent of children under three are malnourished and 1:250 pregnancies result in death as compared to 1: 12, 500 in the US." (http://www.curamericas.org/wherewework/guatemala.html)

Stage 1: The Initial Experience: Summer, 2010

The breakeven point for the program is approximately 20 participating high school students. Due to a number of factors, only 8 students were accepted into the program. Rather than cancel the program, the granting agency decided to run the first year as a pilot, primarily due to the remoteness of the location. The difference between the pilot program and the full scale is the number of high school students accepted, 8 students in the pilot, and 20 to 30 in the full scale program. The objectives for the summer engineering program were:

The following discussion will focus predominantly on the engineering aspects of the program and specifically the engineering design functional group. By the completion of the GPSA Summer Program in Guatemala the student will be expected to:

* Apply the engineering design process.

* Work in a team to effectively solve problems and complete projects.

* Design and assemble simple projects including assistive needs devices.

* Conduct a needs assessment.

* Identify stakeholders and explain the importance of stakeholders in engineering design.

* Participate in and facilitate brainstorming activities.

* Define design constraints and specifications.

* Develop design constraints and specifications.

* Conduct concept evaluation.

* Understand concepts of sustainable design.

* Prepare a poster or presentation that demonstrates the learning experience from the GPSA summer program in Guatemala.

High school students were recruited throughout the United States utilizing announcements in various talented student organizations, the Health Occupations Students of America (HOSA) newsletter, in person presentations to high school groups and flyers at conferences. Interested students applied to the program, and could be eligible for financial assistance, or may fundraise to cover the program expenses which included all travel, transfers, food, lodging, excursions, except travel to the FGCU campus and spending money. Student selection criteria included an expressed desire to pursue a career in a health related field (e.g., medicine, nursing, physical therapy, and bioengineering), experience with a foreign language (at least one year of high school foreign language), demonstration of community service and recommendations from community leaders and school officials.

Eight students (five female and three male) were accepted into the program. The students came from Texas, North Carolina, New York, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. Approximately 50% received financial assistance for the program cost. The two engineering faculty members and the nursing faculty member traveled to Guatemala for the initial program during the summer of 2010.

The Campus Orientation: Two Days

The project began with a summer program, designed to introduce high school students, primarily juniors and seniors, to engineering and health care needs in the developing world. The program started with the students' arrival on the FGCU campus. The first evening included a dinner, an introduction of the students and program faculty. Two full days were spent on the FGCU campus. The nursing faculty member introduced the students to basic health care assessment tools such as taking blood pressure, temperature and weight and introduced the students to community health assessment concepts. Engineering faculty members introduced the engineering design process, needs assessment, and client interviewing techniques.

The Three Week Guatemalan Experience

The third day of the program was a travel day. Students and faculty traveled from Fort Myers, FL to Guatemala City, Guatemala, and then on to Calhuitz, Guatemala. The trip from Guatemala City took two days, approximately 18-20 hours, by micro bus. For the next 3 weeks the group resided in the visitor center of Casa Materna in Calhuitz.

Calhuitz is a remote village in the northwestern mountains of Guatemala with a population of approximately 1200 people. Most of the village men earn a living by walking 2 hours each way, usually waking at 4:00 am and returning home around 8:00 pm, to work on farms. Women of the village are expected to tend to the home and the children. Grown men and women unable to perform theses function have little value in the community and are seen as a burden to their families. Other than the "cantinas" which are storefronts operated out of the homes that sell chips, soda and some candy, operated by local families, there is no industry or local economy.

Educational opportunities in Calhuitz consist of a "public" school and a small school run by the Catholic Church. Many of the young children attend school. When a girl reaches approximately 10-12 years of age (usually the total education at this time is the equivalent of 3rd or 4th grade) she typically quits school to help take care of the home, cook meals, wash clothes and perform other household tasks. Boys are encouraged to stay in school through 8th grade. Currently children attending high school would have to walk to a neighboring community for their education.

Calhuitz is also home to Casa Materna. Casa Materna is a women's and early childcare clinic. The primary role of Casa Materna is to serve as a maternal care and childbirth clinic. There is one physician, Dr. Manuel, in the area who tends to approximately 20,000 people in the Nantone region. Dr. Manuel attempts to visit the community once a week; however this is often not possible due to several factors including case load and weather. In addition to Dr. Manuel, Casa Materna employs two trained nurse midwives, neither of whom lives in Calhuitz, an education specialist and a clerk for the pharmacy and supplies store. When asked, on several occasions, how people earned money or what the economy of Calhuitz consisted of, the team never got an answer. Most of the work is done through barter; for instance medical care is exchanged for fire wood or chickens.

Creating Engineering Design Functional Groups

During the time in the country, the high school students were separated into teams, two teams of three and one team of two. At least one student on each team was fluent in Spanish. Teams were assigned to one of three functions: health care delivery, engineering design or technology, and the assignments rotated weekly. Monday through Thursday the schedule followed a format of functional group and large group activities. The first week was focused on health assessments, the second week on technology, and the final week on engineering design. The faculty met every morning to discuss the daily schedule and adapted lessons to provide as much topic coverage as possible while adapting to the community needs.

The engineering design functional group's project was to identify client based needs focused on adaptive devices, such as a walking device or a tool to assist a person with everyday tasks. Two engineering faculty members were the leaders for each group. Every Monday morning the team would meet with the community liaison, Jose. Jose was born and raised in the community, although he spent several years in the United States and spoke English, Spanish and Chuj, and personally knew almost every member of the community. He selected at least two individuals or families for each team to meet with for the week. Typically the team met the first individual on Monday and the second on Wednesday. The team would walk to the client's home and the students would conduct interviews. Since the native language in the village was Chuj, the high school students would conduct the interviews in Spanish. Jose would translate from Spanish to Chuj, the client or client's family would respond in Chuj; Jose would translate to Spanish and the students would translate from Spanish to English. One faculty member video recorded the interviews while the other documented the interview questions and answers. Students also documented the interviews.

After the interview, which typically lasted 1 1/2 to 2 hours, the team would return to the Casa Materna to discuss the identified needs, brainstorm solutions and work on documentation and editing the video recording. Details of the interviews are provided in the Clients section. If necessary, the team would return to the client on the second day (Tuesday or Thursday). If a return visit was not necessary, the team would continue to brainstorm solutions and develop a plan to provide a solution for the family either prior to leaving Calhuitz, or as a longer term project to be developed over the next academic year and brought back during the next trip.

Upon returning to the United States a mini conference was hosted on the FGCU campus. Students were assigned either a poster or a presentation for the conference. Topic areas included "Life in Calhuitz", "Needs Assessment", "Engineering Design" and "Community Health". University administration, other faculty, local high school teachers and representatives from Southwest Florida business were in attendance at the conference.

The Clients

The following are examples of clients the students interviewed. Three of these projects have been implemented into the Engineering Service Learning and Engineering Entrepreneurship courses. The student based projects will be completed by April 2011. Final products will be delivered to the clients either before the start of the summer, 2011 program, or as part of the summer program.

Maria is a 12 year old girl with difficulty walking among other disabilities. Although undiagnosed, Maria appears to have Down 's syndrome and suffers from seizures. Maria's parents expressed a need for a device that allows children and young adults the ability to travel long distances with minimum work over rough terrain including mud, rocks, steep hills and other obstacles. Given Maria's physical limitations she is unable to join her family on excursions outside the homestead (such as walking to church or market) and is usually left home alone. A temporary solution was developed and delivered to the family; however a long term solution that provides for self mobility is desired. The goal of the project is to design a vehicle that meets the needs of disabled persons in rough terrain environments and can be manufactured in Calhuitz. This project was used as the design project for the high school students who built a cart out of locally available material and delivered the finished product to the family. This project is also continuing in the current engineering entrepreneurship course where students are improving upon the original design as well as developing a business plan to produce the carts in or near Calhuitz.

Roberto is a 13 year old boy currently in 3rd grade in the elementary school in Calhuitz. His goal is to become a teacher. Roberto was born with a club foot making sitting in a standard chair uncomfortable therefore making it difficult to study. The team's assessment was he needed an adjustable desk with support for the leg of a child or young adult. Ideally, the desk needed to made of low cost, readily available material, be lightweight, adjust to the growth needs of a child, be portable, and be easy to assemble/manufacture. This project has also been introduced to the current engineering entrepreneurship course. Students working on this project plan to develop a prototype, researching locally available materials in Calhuitz and developing a feasibility analysis to produce the carts in or near Calhuitz.

Julia, Ellatoria and Jose needed a device to walk over rough terrain. Designing devices for walking on nicely paved, flat surfaces and finished floors is a well developed science. Unfortunately, the devices used in the developed world are less than ideal for people in developing countries. The clients are three adults, with varying levels of walking ability from unstable but able to walk upright to unable to walk upright, moving about in a modified crawl (hands and feet rather than hands and knees). The need is to design a device that would assist these three adults with walking over a rough terrain that includes steep hills, mud, rocks, uneven pathways and other obstacles. Low cost is an essential criterion for this device. This is the third project introduced to the current entrepreneurship course. Undergraduate engineering students are developing a product similar to a crutch or walking device, suitable for the terrain- rocky, uneven, hilly and muddy, while Maria's needs, the first project, require a special cart design for transportation.

Stage 2: Engineering

These three projects, (Maria, Roberto, and Julia, Ellatoria and Jose) have been identified as long term projects. These projects were identified as having engineering design and entrepreneurial aspects appropriate for upper level engineering courses, specifically the Engineering Service Learning and Engineering Entrepreneurship courses. There is demand for each of these products beyond the clients identified. The goal is to ultimately develop a means to manufacture the items in or near Calhuitz to be sold, or bartered, in the surrounding communities, which will provide local work for the people. The learning objectives for the Engineering Service Learning are for students to identify a community based need and develop a proposed solution to meet the need.

As of the writing of this article, the three teams have submitted initial project proposals for the three clients. Design concepts are preliminary, and will be subjected to testing and prototyping in the spring semester. All three teams have incorporated sustainable design concepts including local manufacturability into their original designs. Project posters are provided in Figure 1, 2 and 3.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]

[FIGURE 3 OMITTED]

Engineering Entrepreneurship is the follow-on course that requires the students to take the proposed solution from Engineering Service Learning and develop the solution into a working model and develop a business plan for the solution. During the second class, Engineering Entrepreneurship students will be teamed up with MBA students in an Entrepreneurship business planning course The MBA students will concentrate on the business plan aspects while the engineers refine and test the designs. Completed projects will be delivered to the clients in July of 2011, when the summer program returns to Calhuitz. At least one engineering undergraduate student will be acting as a counselor for the 2011 program and will assist with the engineering educational program.

Stage 3: Entrepreneurship

In the first week of the spring, 2011 class, the MBA business planning students will hear a presentation by the engineering professor about the specific projects needing feasibility studies. Each student (or team) will select the project they are most interested in working on. The students will develop full feasibility plans for each of the projects designed by the engineering students. The two classes will have four separate class periods in which the engineering students will be working with the MBA students. In addition, a Blackboard/Angel website will be set up so that students can exchange information and share ideas as they are working on their projects. At the end of the semester, a final awards ceremony is planned for the best project design and feasibility study from the semester. Judges from the community will be asked to judge the awards ceremony and funds will be awarded to the student group with the best overall project and feasibility study from the Institute of Entrepreneurship at FGCU.

CONCLUSION

The program described is a unique collaboration of a summer experience for high school students, undergraduate students in engineering and MBA students in Entrepreneurship. High school students had the opportunity to live in the community in Calhuitz, Guatemala and work in the local clinic and the community at large. Students learned about entrepreneurship using an engineering approach to complex problems faced by the community, specifically community members in need of assistive devices. The original intent of the program was to first develop a needs assessment, then create assistive devices, which would be designed by undergraduate students and then returned to the village the following summer; however during the needs identification the students and faculty teams identified entrepreneurial solutions and immediately implemented them. Students were able to immediately feel a sense of accomplishment in making a difference to someone's life.

Each team provided well-documented needs statements, problem constraints and criteria, and supporting materials such as interviews and videos by the end of the program. The project ideas were summarized and specific projects were identified by the students and faculty as suitable for a two-course sequence in Engineering Service Learning and Engineering Entrepreneurship.

During the second semester course, Engineering Entrepreneurship, the undergraduate engineering students are being teamed up with MBA students taking a business planning course. Together the undergraduate Engineering Entrepreneurship students and graduate students will write a feasibility analysis based on the needs assessments of the high school student teams and the product design developed by the undergraduate engineering students for implementation in Calhuitz, Guatemala.

This project was a success as it provided an educational and research component to three levels of students (high school, undergraduate engineering, and graduate business students). The educational component of the program consist of conducting a course in Problem Solving and Design for Developing Countries, with emphasis on sustainability, business feasibility and universal design aspects important to developing countries and rural communities.

The research component entails high school students, along with the faculty, documenting needs of local community members that would benefit from assistive devices for improved quality of life. The "Problem Solving and Design for Developing Countries" course was used to introduce the high school participants to the engineering design process. Each case was video documented and summarized (through methods learned in their classes given in their first two days in their Problem Solving and Design course) and presented to undergraduate students to be used in a series of design courses completed as yearlong project, and returned to the community during the following summer visit.

The feasibility plan will require additional research which will be done in conjunction with the MBA students to develop a business plan that will be used for implementation. For the MBA students, it provides a great opportunity to apply their learning to something of real value to society.

Initial Lessons Learned and Recommended Changes

Clients were identified by the local contact, Jose. The concept of adaptive devices was not fully understood and created challenges in identifying the best suited clients. Many of the families interviewed had children with severe physical and mental disabilities. Although the team wanted to help these families, the challenges faced were largely medicinal and therapeutic in nature rather than addressed by the addition of an adaptive device. This initial experience provided the engineering faculty a benchmark for the needs of the community and allowed us to communicate the characteristics of an appropriate client to the community liaison.

Future programs will have 20 to 30 students. The current model is not scalable to these numbers. In future programs students will select modules for the daytime activity (needs assessment being one of the modules) and all students will be involved in the engineering design component of the program. It was also difficult to keep the High School students involved once the program was turned over to the engineering students. For the next program, the engineering professor plans to develop a group cite, such as Facebook, so the engineering and high school students can stay better connected. In addition, they can use pod casting through YouTube to keep the high school, engineering and business students more connected, and thereby more committed to the final project.

In addition, the Engineering professor and the MBA professor realized they should have had their student's class times at the same time so the students would be able to work together more efficiently. In addition, a rubric needs to be furthered developed with criteria for both classes.

In summary, the project described in this paper, while still in the initial stages, describes an example of how colleges and schools of business and engineering can work together to foster innovation and social entrepreneurship among the future leaders, thereby implementing the goals put forth by the AACSB. Involving students at several levels and across disciplines shows them that working with others to solve problems can be both socially and economically profitable, and truly may be the way to change the world by solving many of the problems faced by those less fortunate.

REFERENCES

Business Schools on an Innovation Mission: Report of the AACSB International Task Force on Business Schools and Innovation (2010). http://www.aacsb.edu/resources/innovation/publications.asp. Retrieved December 16, 2010.

Drayton, B. & V. Budinich (2010). A New Alliance for Global Change. Harvard Business Review, September, 56-64

Habiby, A.S. & D.M. Coyle (2010). The High Intensity Entrepreneur. Harvard Business Review, September, 74-78.

Hanushek, E. A., P. E. Peterson & L. Woessmann (2010). Teaching Math to the Talented. Educationnext. Retrieved December 18, 2010, from http://educationnext.org/teaching-math-to-the-talented/

Neck, H., C. Brush & E.Allen (2008). Exploring Social Entrepreneurship Activity in the United States: For Profit Ventures Generating Social and Economic Value. Frontiers of Entrepreneurship Research, 28 (21), Article 7. Retrieved June 14, 2010 from http://digitalknowledge.babson.edu/fer/vol28/iss21/7/

Our Work in Guatemala. In Curamerica--Guatemala. Retrieved July 8, 2009, from http://www.curamericas.org/wherewework/guatemala.html

Souitaris, V., S. Zerbinati & A. Al-Laham (2007). Journal of Business Venturing, 22 (4) July, 566-591.

Thompson, J.D. & I.C. MacMillan (2010). Making Social Ventures Work. Harvard Business Review, September, 66-73.

Lisa Zidek, Florida Gulf Coast University

Sandra King Kauanui, Florida Gulf Coast University

Diana L. Haytko, Florida Gulf Coast University
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