Entrepreneurship
Bronze Experience
ENME 204: The Ball Wall
In the spring of 2019, I took the 3 credit ENME 204, Introduction to Engineering Design with CAD, course. In the class, I worked with a team to research, design, and complete a project to create a product from design to completion. Throughout the course and project, I learned various techniques to employ in the creation of a product, including a quality function deployment and a Gantt chart. Also, I learned about how to go about patenting a product and how to produce a product that is in demand. I, along with my team, got the opportunity to work with a customer and potential consumers of the product to create a final product that catered to the needs and wants of both parties. From this experience, I increased my teamwork, persistence, and realistic vision. I needed to be creative in the design, while also keeping in mind the limitations and constraints of the real world. Obviously with one semester and a limited budget, it was not feasible to create a massive and expensive project. My team and I took these limitations into account. On the way to completing the product, we had a few setbacks, but we tried to remain positive and learn from the failures to improve the design. Particularly, we were implementing an Archimedes screw in the design, which proved to be a tricky task.
This experience allowed me the opportunity to increase my engineering design skills, which is key to engineering the tools of scientific discovery. It also provided me the opportunity to learn more about entrepreneurship and effective methods to employ as an entrepreneur.
Reflection
This course was a learning experience. I learned so much about entrepreneurship and how to employ the skills I gleaned in entrepreneurial pursuits. I learned how to communicate ideas in a concise way. My team and I completed a research poster that displayed the ideas behind our project and how we implemented them. I learned how to work with a team for an entrepreneurship based project by using a Kolb kite to help recognize each team member's strengths and weaknesses and delegating tasks accordingly. When applying entrepreneurial thinking to social issues and social problems, I got practice by creating a product to address the lack of toys available for children with disabilities. It is important to keep in mind a way to better society when working on entrepreneurial projects. I was also required to apply creative, innovative thinking to solve problems. As a team, we needed to come up with ways to make a toy more accessible to people with disabilities. We implemented an Archimedes screw to move a marble from the bottom of the marble run to the top so students with limited motor abilities would be able to use the toy without having to handle the small marble. We also added movable and colorful track pieces for visual and mental stimulation.