Recent reports (1, 2) have highlighted the need to promote development of innovative skills and entrepreneurial mindsets among undergraduate engineering students. This paper will focus on a new extracurricular 48-hour weekend Intensive Innovation Experience (IIE) designed to provide teams of engineering undergraduates opportunities to pursue rapid development of hardware prototypes for needs identified by industry and non-profit organizations. Over the 48-hours, program participants have access to the maker facility, professional staff, and industry and graduate student mentors. At the end of the event, student teams present their designs and compete for awards. After the conclusion of the event, student teams are encouraged to pursue their innovative solutions to further maturation. This paper will first provide an overview of how the program that was launched in Summer 2014, was developed and implemented. It has been offered three times since then. Next, the authors will present data on achievement of student outcomes in five areas: 1) understanding the design process, 2) problem solving, 3) effective communications, 4) team work, and 5) time management. Finally, the paper will present demographics and post-graduation plans of program participants. For program dissemination, the authors will present detailed program information at the poster session hosted at the same conference.
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