These statements are not failures of content knowledge, but rather examples of how student beliefs about the nature of knowledge can conflict with the assumptions on which we build engineering curricula. This seminar will present work from two studies of engineering students’ epistemological beliefs about design and entrepreneurship. The first uses a critical ethnographic approach to identify how students isolate design and non-design ways of knowing in engineering. The second uses a verbal protocol approach to demonstrate that students adopt media narratives about entrepreneurs as heuristics for thinking. At the center of the studies is a better understanding of how students’ epistemic beliefs affect the ways that they employ knowledge they learn in their undergraduate curricula. The studies are summarized through the language of 1st and 2nd order epistemologies – a philosophical concept which separates beliefs about the nature of knowledge into linear and recursive ways of knowing.

BIO

Todd is a PhD Candidate in Engineering Education at Purdue University who's research is focused on entrepreneurship and design in modern engineering education efforts. He has authored and co-authored multiple publications focused on understanding and assessing student cognition. Todd is active in the Entrepreneurship and Engineering Innovation division within the American Society for Engineering Education. He holds BS and MS degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the Rochester Institute of Technology. Before returning to graduate school he worked in the semiconductor industry and founded several companies.