Giving Compass' Take:

• Getting Smart profiles the Kern Entrepreneurial Engineering Network, which helps young engineers think about how they can use their skills to advance social causes.

• How could this partnership provide a model for other professional networks? Are we supporting STEM students enough through nonprofit education initiatives?

• Here's one program that aims to expand STEM access to low-income students.

The Kern Entrepreneurial Engineering Network is a national partnership of universities with the shared mission to graduate engineers with an entrepreneurial mindset so they can go on to create more personal, economic, and societal value through a lifetime of meaningful work. This is an important mission, as the challenges that engineers face will continue to grow in complexity (and continue to involve more of the “human element”) as the world that they inhabit does the same.

KEEN partners include 43 institutions representing more than 5,100 faculty members who are educating almost 80,000 undergraduate engineering students.

“No one individual or institution alone can make the impact necessary to advance engineering education to reach students and faculty at a national scale,” states Ann McKenna, Professor of Engineering and Director of the Polytechnic School at Arizona State University.

Heather Dillon got involved because of the sense of purpose, she liked to have her students involved in impact projects like Thermodynamics in the Arts. The mechanical engineering professor at University of Portland participates to gain project ideas from across the network.

Read the full article about training engineers to spot opportunity and impact by Tom Vander Ark at Getting Smart.