Creativity, Innovation, and Ingenuity Summer Enrichment Program – Collaborating with a Cultural Institution and Assessment Results

Abstract

Creativity, innovation, the ability to identify a customer need, and using creative problem solving to develop new ventures/products/solutions are vital skills for entrepreneurship. These are also some of the most highly sought skills by employers of engineering graduates. Thus many engineering colleges are incorporating innovation and creativity into the engineering curriculum, but often the topics are delivered piecemeal over multiple courses, losing focus and continuity. Therefore, Lawrence Technological University in collaboration with The Henry Ford (a nationally renowned cultural, historical, and educational destination in Dearborn, Michigan) developed and administered a week-long summer enrichment program (i.e., summer camp) for undergraduate engineering students focused on progressively building from the foundations of the creative process/competencies to the application of innovative techniques coupled with engineering design and problem solving. The program was available to students of multiple engineering disciplines from across the U.S. Throughout the week, the students explored the core competencies of creativity and innovation through activities and games, and they studied and implemented various methods of creative problem solving through teamwork on various problems and product development projects/tasks. To further emphasize innovation (and its relation to American history), two of the five weekdays were spent visiting The Henry Ford which includes the Henry Ford Museum, Greenfield Village, a Ford F-150 truck assembly plant, and the Benson Ford Research Center where they participated in a college-level version of The Henry Ford’s Innovation 101 curriculum. This paper will explain the objectives and format of the program, summarize the benefits of collaborating with a local cultural institution, explain how this program can be transferable to other universities, discuss sustainability of a multi-college summer immersive experience, and present assessment results compiled from three separate camp offerings over three summers. Three unique assessments were performed. The first assessment was a preand post-camp survey conducted to determine the students’ general perceptions of creativity, problem solving, teamwork, leadership, the role of creativity in engineering, and their personal view on their own creativity. A comparison of the preand post-camp surveys yields a positive shift in student perceptions. The second assessment was a survey administered to the students at the conclusion of the week to measure student perceptions of the effectiveness of the program, the delivery techniques, and the format. Based on this student input, these assessment results allowed for the program to be optimized between summers and in fact yielded increasingly positive results from year-to-year. The third assessment was specifically focused on the visit to the cultural institution. The results helped to streamline the connection between the curricula of the University and the cultural institution as well as strengthen the connection between the tour sites and the entire week’s curriculum.