Through the Decade: the Keller Center for Innovation in Engineering Education

Interest in entrepreneurship among students at the University has grown dramatically, and the Keller Center has responded to this by providing opportunities to explore these interests and pursue innovative ideas beyond traditional settings in the classroom and laboratory, Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science Vincent Poor GS ’77 said.

The Keller Center for Innovation in Engineering Education celebrated its tenthanniversary with a symposium on Tuesday featuring keynote speaker Tom Leighton ’78, who is an applied math professor atMIT turned CEO of Akamai, and an introduction by University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83.

Director of the Keller Center Mung Chiang said that innovating education has been a core mission of the Keller Center since its founding in 2005. Engineering, math and physicscourses teach BSE students in an integrated curriculum, and the Engineering Projects in Community Service programprovidesstudents interested in community service through engineering projects with experiential learning opportunities. In addition, the Program in Technology and Society helps prepare leaders in a technology-driven society, he said.

Chiang noted that 238 students in the Class of 2014 have taken at least one of the 12 entrepreneurship and design courses at the Keller Center, and that 66 percent of them came from non-engineering majors.

Chiang said that the Keller Center has two missions: fostering entrepreneurship and innovating education. Within this program, he said, there are four buckets of activity: create, learn, explore and engage. These buckets expose students to entrepreneurship and support those who are interested in it.

Chiang said that since March 2014, the Keller Center has been continuing a strategic process of ‘division’ – the streamlining of activities into the four buckets – and ‘subtraction’ – restructuring existing activities so that they are sustainable, high-quality and unique.

“Collectively, these steps will maximize its ‘multiplication’ impact: casting a longer shadow than its actual size in terms of serving Princeton students, faculty and alumni,” Chiang said.

Hannah Miller ’16, a member of the Keller Center’s Student Advisory Council, noted that University students are creative, but demanding class schedules and extracurricular activities might make the idea of starting a business or other endeavor overwhelming. The Keller Center has made great progress in countering this perception and fostering a spirit of entrepreneurship on campus, she said.

“It has offered opportunities that expose students to inspirational entrepreneurs, provide resources and support to students starting their own ventures and connect students with outside startups for jobs and internships,” Miller said.

Miller is a former design staffer for The Daily Princetonian.

Miller also noted that programs such as the eLab summer accelerator program attract both undergraduate and graduate students from a variety of backgrounds. The Innovation Forum, an event for researchers to present potentially marketable discoveries, has featured many graduate students, she said.

Sunny Feng ’16, another member of the Keller Center’s Student Advisory Council, said that he hopes the Keller Center works towards the creation of an entrepreneurship certificate. Having a certificate program would open up even more possibilities for aspiring entrepreneurs, he noted.

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“An extensive core EGR course list is already in place, and there are VIS, COS and other departmental courses that could supplement it,” Feng said.

Chiang said that a potential certificate program in entrepreneurship, innovation and design is being explored in a way that will ensure a high caliber of intellectual content, learning-by-doing components and synergistic integration to the liberal arts educational environment at the University. He noted that they are still early in the process of mapping out details.

Poor also noted there have been discussions about a certificate involving innovation and design, and entrepreneurship would fit into this more general subject area.

“As a whole, I think this group of subjects would make sense as an academic certificate as it can be tied meaningfully to many disciplines across campus,” Poor said.

Concerns

Students have expressed concerns in the past that the University’s engineering program focused too much on theoretical rather than applied engineering. Poor noted that the curricula were designed to educate students for career-long success in their fields, which requires a focus on the fundamentals of engineering.

“That said, it certainly doesn’t hurt to expose students to specific applications, and this is largely done through experiential learning — internships, research projects, etc. — which is part of Princeton’s traditional culture and also part of the Keller Center’s mission,” Poor said.

Entrepreneurship professor John Danner also addressed this concern, noting that students are interested in having a solid theoretical grounding but also want to find outlets for their curiosity that can have an impact on the world and benefit others.

“What the Keller Center is doing and has been doing every day is to help that translation process, so that students have that opportunity to experiment and decide what type of entrepreneurship they are interested in — changing-the-world entrepreneurship or changing-the-market entrepreneurship,” he said.

Danner noted the Keller Center has been instrumental in connecting expanding student opportunity through initiatives such as Demo Days, competitions and the eLab.

“The eLab involves both program and concept design and provides more intensive support for students who are actively interested in developing specific ventures through a combination of mentorship, networks, focused support, classes and even investors,” Danner said.

Chiang noted that the eLab summer accelerator helped 27 teams in the past four summers explore the lives of entrepreneurs.

Entrepreneurship professor Derek Lidow '73 said that five years ago, there were only a few entrepreneurship courses, but this has expanded into 17 courses offered today, including courses that are unique in being offered at an undergraduate level. He added that there has been a similar expansion of co-curricular offerings including eLab, E-Hub and workshops that offer support to students, a fact that is often overlooked.

“I think the Keller Center has helped make thousands of graduates much more confident in their ability to think differently and willing to take risks to make lasting positive impacts on the world,” Lidow said.

Lidow noted that although some research shows that entrepreneurship classes have little impact on students and their ultimate interest and success, the University’s courses have differed. In surveys of graduates over the past decade, it is evident that the courses offered at the University do correlate with later achievements, he added.

Entrepreneurship professor Christopher Kuenne ’85 said that as this vital element of American socioeconomic fabric continues to evolve, the University is doing what it does best, defining both the curricular and co-curricular elements of its programs to ensure that those who graduate from the University are prepared to be responsible citizens in an increasingly entrepreneurial world.

“The Keller Center is one of several key elements of Princeton’s entrepreneurial culture, and now with the E-Hub, is continuing to expand both the practicing courses and the co-curricular elements of Princeton’s program,” Kuenne said.

He noted that another key contributor to the University’s entrepreneurial culture is the Entrepreneurship Club, which offers opportunities such as TigerTreks that allow students to spend a week in New York City or Silicon Valley and speak with technology luminaries. These opportunitiesexpose students to successful entrepreneurial founders, hackathons, speaker series and many other events.

Internships

In addition to the programs and courses offered, Keller Center also offers several summer internship programs. These include the newest Princeton Start-Up Immersion Program for students interested in internships at start-ups, which is to be launched in New York City during the summer of 2016, according to the Keller Center.

Emily Hsu ’16 explained that she first found out about the International Research Exchange Program internship, an international research exchange program that offers students the ability to participate in an eight-week research project in their field of study, in her freshman year.

“It sounded like a great opportunity and the idea of going abroad appealed to me, so I applied for an internship and ended up going to Hong Kong the summer after my freshman year,” she said.

Jamil Merali ’18 also participated in a REACH internship and noted that in addition to internships, the Keller Center offers many opportunities for students to work on startups, which would foster an entrepreneurial spirit. He hopes that as many of these internships and programs as possible should be offered, since many students would be interested in participating.

“Not only did it further my formal education in electrical engineering but [it] was also a great cultural experience as I’m sure that you can imagine what two months in Hong Kong would be [like],” Merali said.

David Prilutsky ’18 said that the REACH experience also allows students to go abroad.

“I felt that my experience was exceptionally great because the department I worked in put a strong emphasis on team-building, which manifested into group outings and events, all of which helped me feel a part of the community,” he said.

Beginnings of Entrepreneurship at Princeton

The position of Visiting Professor in Entrepreneurship, which was established in 2007, was renamed in 2010 after Dean Emeritus of the School of Engineering and Applied Science James Wei. Although the entrepreneurship culture in Princeton today is well-developed, it was not the same as it was a few decades ago, Weisaid.

“The culture of Princeton in the 1990s was very scholarly, and the faculty and students [made] discoveries and let others take on the task of moving from discoveries to make products and services to benefit the world,” Wei said.

Wei added that the School of Engineering and Applied Science at the time would be described more as 90 percent applied science and 10 percent engineering.

“It took a tremendous effort and many pioneers to steer Princeton to a balance, which is more in keeping with the motto ‘Princeton in the Nation’s Service’,” he said.

Entrepreneurship professor Ed Zschau ’61 said that the entrepreneurship courses and programs came into being in 1997 under the vision and leadership of Wei. Zschau met with Wei, who was Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science at the time, at his 36threunion. He followed up with a letter outlining initiatives that could be taken to establish entrepreneurship opportunities for students.

Zschau said that although Princeton does not have a business school, the engineering school provided a natural home for entrepreneurial programs because engineering’s impact is fully realized in the form of products and services. He noted that startups are often the best vehicles to do that.

Zschau’s High Tech Entrepreneurship course was first offered in the fall 1997 semester, with 45 seniors enrolled.Zschau offered the course for 30 additional semesters over the next 15 years, with approximately 1,600 students completing it. Some of the initiatives he had suggested to Wei were later implemented, but not in the manner or order he had envisioned, he noted.

Although the Keller Center was founded in 2005 as the Center for Innovation in Engineering Education, the history of entrepreneurship in the form of courses and programs precedes it, Zschau said.

Raeva Kumar ’17, E-Club co-president, said that six undergraduate students founded the organization in 1998 with the support of Zschau.

E-Club is student-run and is among the largest organizations on campus, with an officer corps of 70 and programming that reaches thousands of students, she said.

“The energy, enthusiasm and insight that the Keller Center brings to their programming and this campus is invaluable, and E-Club is very excited to continue to work with them,” she said.

According to Kumar, the Keller Center supports 13 different E-Club programs, and the combined emphasis on entrepreneurship is making a tangible difference on campus. At the same time, there is room for growth, and the two are working to build up programs and a community to support the endeavors.

“The Keller Center is the perfect partner in this, and in the next few years, entrepreneurship at Princeton will very much thrive,” Kumar said.

The Keller Center was officially namedafter Dennis Keller ’63 and his wife Constance Templeton Keller donated $25 million to the University’s Aspire capital campaign in 2008, with the desire to introduce A.B. students to the potential of technology.