There is a small but growing body of evidence that entrepreneurship programs add value to students, the degree programs in which they are housed, and the institutions that host them. The Engineering Entrepreneurs Program at North Carolina State University, a program in which undergraduate students participate in design teams formed around technology start-up company themes, was started with funding from the NSF-sponsored SUCCEED (Southeastern Universities and Colleges Coalition for Engineering Education) Coalition primarily to improve the confidence and retention of engineering students.Multiple assessment approaches including surveys, focus groups, interviews, longitudinal assessment of retention and academic performance, and anecdotal evidence triangulate on the success of this program at meeting its primary objectives and others. Particularly, the longitudinal study revealed that program participants had higher engineering retention rates (70 percent vs. 51 percent) and GPAs (3.08 vs. 2.83) than a matched set of non-participants. The program and its rigorous assessment serve as models for the engineering entrepreneurship community.

The effects of merit-based scholarships on engineering students are studied by relating the GPA, credit load, and retention rates of engineering student merit-based scholarship recipients and students who met the same SAT and high school GPA criteria but did not receive the scholarship because it was not offered at the time of their enrollment. Student record data for 10,167 engineering students at three institutions in the state of Florida from 1987 to 2002 are extracted from a nineinstitution database with student records data from 1987 to 2002 compiled by the Southeastern University and College Coalition for Engineering Education (SUCCEED) and used to examine the differences between the two groups of students in terms of GPA, semester credit hours, and percent leaving engineering over time.

Today's global job market requires a worker-oriented focus that emphasises individuals' competencies and is steadily phasing out the task-oriented model that once dominated most work environments. Also impacting the world of work is the pressure to eliminate all forms of waste in manufacturing as companies strive to compete on a global scale. Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), considered to be the next generation of lean thinking, shows great promise as a means of managing and tracking products through their entire lifecycle, from design through recycling. This paper proposes the creation of a competency model for engineers functioning in a PLM environment.

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Relatively few studies have focused specifically upon racial and/or ethnic minority cohorts who choose to matriculate within engineering. This research will consider one such underrepresented group, African American women, who are making successful progress toward undergraduate degrees in any of the engineering disciplines. This work in progress examines the following questions: 1) What are the women's reasons for selecting engineering? 2) Having chosen to remain in engineering, what strategies are assisting them in their efforts to succeed and excel? And 3) What are the issues that are of special concern to them as African American women who have chosen a field of study that has traditionally been viewed as overwhelmingly White and male? AUTHOR INFORMATION