<p>Cross-posting in the business forum for more visibility:</p>
<p>DS is in Project Lead the Way at his HS, and is an officer of the engineering club. He's not a tech geek, and actually enjoys his business classes even more. Our school principal wants to renovate the aging auditorium. Like most such rooms, it's a large underutilized space. She wants to adapt it to be usable as a lecture hall at times, while still housing concerts and the usual stuff. Through their teacher, she asked the engineering students design ideas for new seating. DS came up with the best idea of the group. They are now designing a prototype which will be built by 3D printer, and they will present their idea to the school board.</p>
<p>My older S was admitted a few years ago to Lehigh's Integrated Business and Engineering program. He chose not to attend, but the program really impressed. For admitted student day, we got a taste of how they integrate the subjects. IBE students worked in teams, each designing and engineering a new product to solve a need, and a business plan to bring it to market. For college kids, they were very impressive. I mentioned to DS that this auditorium project is similar to what we saw at Lehigh. He just engineered a potential solution to a problem, and now has to propose it to a "customer" in the school board. He said this is what he wants to do in college, do the engineering but also the business side. Unfortunately he doesn't care for Lehigh, so my question for the experts here, how or where can he study engineering while also learning the business aspects? </p>
<p>There are several options. One might be a dual B.S. M.S program with business being the M.S. or minors in business for an engineering program. Then there are project based learning requirements like the [url="<a href="http://ipro.iit.edu/“]IPro[/url”>http://ipro.iit.edu/"]IPro[/url</a>] program at my university, Illinois Tech, where there are projects which are more entrepreneurial (enPro projects). Finally, most universities have co-curricular opportunities in this area. I am fairly confident that just about any engineering school will have these options.</p>
<p>Look at the University of Maryland in College Park. There are a variety of ways to approach both interests there. There are several formal programs: EIP (The Entrepreneurship and Innovation Program), QUEST Honors Fellows Program, and Hinman CEO’s program. They also offer a minor in Technology Entrepreneurship. Here are links to look into </p>
<p>“He just engineered a potential solution to a problem” - That’s great. Many engineers do that sort of desigm. without the need for highly technical analysis. But most engineering curriculum is very heavily on mathematical problem solving. I think it’s great that there are more and more project-oriented opportunities in engineering programs,but students will still spend a lot of the week doing calc, problem sets, etc. Less so I think on IE - that may be a good a path if he likes the business angle too. </p>
<p>We IE’s still do a lot of math, especially if your program is optimization heavy. We still go through calc I-III & diffyQ’s, but then we go more into the linear programming, OR, stochastics, probability & statistical inference, design of experiments relm which is why a lot of our stuff aligns well with “business” because it involves a lot of decision analysis through those methods.</p>