The Innovation, Product Design, and Entrepreneurship Program offers an interdisciplinary certificate that is open to all Swanson School undergraduates, as well as qualified undergraduates from other units. This flexible program gives students the opportunity to learn the principles of design, creativity, and entrepreneurship through hands-on experience.
Why Innovation, Product Design, and Entrepreneurship?
Employers seek engineers with skills in an array of emerging areas who can move products from conception to market quickly. It has become essential for engineers to integrate marketing and business strategies with new product design skills, and to understand how design choices affect manufacturing and production.
Many graduates also go on to start their own companies, either right after graduation or within a few years. Whether students plan to enter industry, pursue graduate school, or move into fields like medicine, business, or law, this certificate gives them the skills to start a venture whenever they choose.
Certificate
The certificate combines coursework with co-curricular experiences, and students can choose from a broad range of options. Courses provide the exposure and foundational theory that complement a student's major and allow them to branch into other areas of inquiry.
Curriculum
The certificate's innovative, challenging, and exciting courses cover:
- Design thinking
- Additive manufacturing
- Virtual and rapid prototyping techniques, from low to high resolution
- Integrated electronic and physical systems
- Business aspects of product creation
Course Spotlight: Innovating for Public Impact
In Innovating for Public Impact, student teams work with community partners to tackle complex, real-world challenges. Recent partners have included the Pennsylvania National Guard, the Pittsburgh Technology Council, and the City of Pittsburgh, with projects ranging from emergency communications to technology ecosystems to green space in Hazelwood. Students interview people in the field, present their findings, and refine their recommendations, learning to understand a problem fully before designing a solution.
Read the full story: Where a Classroom Meets Community