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Promoting Innovation by Women through Engineering Entrepreneurship Courses: An Assessment of Entrepreneurial Self-Efficacy

Engineering entrepreneurship education programs are increasingly exposing students to entrepreneurship and innovation. Little is known about student learning gains in these programs, particularly from a gender perspective. This study examines gender differences in students’ Entrepreneurial Self-efficacy (ESE) among students enrolled in a senior-level College of Engineering’s entrepreneurship practicum course. The ESE Scale was administered at the beginning and end of the semester to measure students’ self-efficacy for five ESE constructs – searching, planning, marshalling, implementing-people and implementing-finance. The findings reveal improvement in students searching, planning, marshalling, and implementing-finance constructs after the course. Significant gender differences were found for planning, marshalling, and implementing-finance constructs in students’ pre survey responses with female students reporting lower ESE. However, no significant gender differences were noted in students’ post survey responses. This indicates that female students were able to reach similar levels of ESE as male students as an outcome of instruction. These results demonstrate the positive impact of an entrepreneurship course on female students’ ESE and the importance of entrepreneurship programs for promoting innovation regardless of gender.