Abstract:

Various research in emotional intelligence concepts indicates that Positive Intelligence (PI) Training can transform students as they become aware of their self-inhibiting and self-mastery behaviors. Positive Intelligence, a branch of human psychology developed by Dr. Shirzad Chamine, indicates how much control you have over your mind. As part of this, he identified two modes, the saboteurs (self-inhibiting) and the sage (self-mastery). He defines a higher Positive Intelligence as your mind acting as your friend (self-mastery) and encouraging you far more than acting as your enemy. Low Positive Intelligence means your mind works as your enemy (self-sabotage). Positive Intelligence training programs have been applied in various fields in counseling, psychotherapy, organizational development, education, and business, and multiple studies have assessed its effectiveness in different contexts. However, more research must be conducted to train engineering students on positive Intelligence and develop their potential to commercialize an innovation using Student Presentation Based Effective Teaching (SPET). This paper presents a pilot study that discusses Positive Intelligence training to unleash engineering students' potential to commercialize invention in a Historically Black College and University (HBCU). To achieve this, graduate engineering students in the mandatory MECH 500 Research Methods and Technical Communication course were trained on different aspects of Positive Intelligence using Student Presentation Based Effective Teaching (SPET). After the initial introduction to Positive Intelligence, graduate engineering students were requested to self-educate using online content and videos and undertake the Positive Intelligence self-assessment tests. Students were then asked to 1) complete the assignments based on assigned questions and 2) prepare a group presentation on PI by including their insights for class discussion. We then developed a Positive Intelligence questionnaire to assess students' competence in PI and their potential to commercialize an innovation/invention. The Positive Intelligence survey had 18 questions and was administered to fifteen (15) students in the selected HBCU in the Washington, DC, area. We analyzed the percentages of the responses from these graduate engineering students. The results revealed that most graduate engineering students showed a high level of competence and understanding of Positive Intelligence and an increased tendency to commercialize innovation. This finding aligns with earlier studies of emotional intelligence/competencies associated with developing the potential for innovation commercialization. Participating students recommended that Positive Intelligence be offered to other students to help them build their self-mastery skills and ultimately improve their tendency to commercialize an invention. We recommend a more extensive study to validate the findings of this study. Based on the outcome of this study, to develop engineering students' tendency to commercialize an innovation, universities' engineering curricula can include human psychology concepts such as Positive Intelligence and Transactional Analysis.

Keywords:

Engineering education, positive intelligence, innovation commercialization, engineering student, Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs).