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Market forces and other external pressures have significantly transformed higher education over the past four decades. Research on the influence of cross-sector permeation on doctoral education has primarily focused on preparing and socializing students for academic careers that involve entrepreneurial activity. Conversely, PhD student agency involving cross-sector engagement and the pursuit of individual values and goals in ways that span the boundaries of academia have been overlooked. The purpose of this study is to qualitatively explore how a sample of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) students in Science, Technology, Mathematics and Engineering (STEM) programs recognized, made sense of and navigated cross-sector permeation relevant to their individual passions and commitments to climate change alleviation.

The authors conducted an embedded case study that qualitatively explored how 16 STEM PhD students recognized, made sense of and navigated cross-sector permeation relevant to their individual values and goals and commitments to climate change alleviation. Data were collected through individual interviews that probed the participants’ engagement and agency in cross-sector permeation.

The authors identified three themes that frame the role of PhD students as boundary spanning agents. The themes involve students placing their values and goals over specific positions and career paths, aligning their values and goals with cross-sector conditions and creating opportunities through cross-sector engagement.

Recommendations are provided for fostering and enhancing the agency PhD students have over the pursuit of their individual values and goals and their engagement in boundary spanning activities and strategies.

Cross-sector permeation is framed relevant to PhD student agency and boundary spanning. The findings introduce the role of PhD students as boundary spanning agents who intentionally pursue their individual values and goals in ways that extend beyond traditional academic career pathways.

Individuals with skills specific to innovation and entrepreneurial strategy are in high demand within the contemporary workforce. This demand transcends most, if not all, professions and career paths. Yet, entrepreneurial leadership education continues to be viewed mostly as a business-oriented domain. We expand the otherwise narrow scope of entrepreneurial leadership education through an examination of the effects of an interdisciplinary, project-based entrepreneurial leadership course on student proclivities to leading change. We used a retrospective pre- and post-measure pre-experimental design to conduct the study. Our findings indicate an increase across the sample (n = 62) in entrepreneurial leadership proclivity following course completion. The insights we generate reveal opportunities for strengthening collegiate entrepreneurial leadership curriculum and instruction and enhancing the capacities of students to become effective leaders of change (i.e., change agents).

The complex value chain that facilitates local food production and consumption includes purveyors positioned across a range of marketspaces who through the various ways they present and sell their products help create and convey the meaning of “local food.” Limited governance within local food systems (LFSs) and a lack of consensus on the definition of “local food” provide purveyors with notable latitude in how they frame the meaning of “local” in the food products they produce, market, and sell. Consequently, the expansion of food products that are framed as being “local” within conventional marketspaces threatens to convolute the meaning and representation of local food within specific LFSs and across the broader local food movement (LFM). Here, I use a structured photo analysis design to explore the elements that influence the visual representation of “local food” by purveyors within five farmers’ markets and five grocery stores located across the Southern Arizona LFS (SALFS). I consider the farmers’ markets to be alternative marketspaces and the grocery stores to be conventional marketspaces. The data consist of 683 original photos taken of local food framing practices within the farmers’ markets and grocery stores and extensive field notes captured throughout multiple direct observations at each market space. My exploration is guided by a theoretical framework composed of constructs specific to institutional logic, product framing, and taste regimes. The findings illustrate how local food framing practices across alternative and mainstream marketspaces foster a local food taste regime that fails to convey the fundamental principles and values of the LFM. Recommendations for both practice and research are developed from the findings.

This study used qualitative discourse analysis to explore how researchers use the concept of ingenuity to understand the everyday work of social entrepreneurs. Data were drawn from a sample of 69 research articles published across 41 academic journals between 1998 and 2018. The findings showed ingenuity to be an underdeveloped concept in the social entrepreneurship literature and revealed a paucity of research on the everyday work performed by social entrepreneurs. A framework for studying the work of social entrepreneurs at the “scale of the everyday” through the lens of ingenuity is proposed, and recommendations for future research are provided.

This chapter opens with a brief historical account of the vision and development of the land grant college and university system. This account begins to frame the land grant model as an important American social innovation. Next, the legacy of the land grant system as a social innovation is extended through a review of the role the Cooperative Extension System in enacting the New Deal during the Great Depression era. The topic culminates in the chapter with a critical exploration of the revenue-driven university technology transfer system that is currently in place and presents an alternative model that is anchored in the principles and practices of social entrepreneurship. Land grant colleges and universities are positioned as key agents in advancing such an alternative model, which is consistent with the historical role these institutions have played in advancing the economic and social interests of the nation.

There is pressure to transform graduate education in ways that better prepare and socialize students for academic careers that require entrepreneurial activities and/or professional pathways outside of academia. The inclusion of entrepreneurial learning in graduate curricula and programs is one strategy for responding to such calls. Yet, there lacks an understanding of how graduate students outside of the business fields make sense of entrepreneurial content relevant to their academic interests and career aspirations. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to explore entrepreneurial sensemaking by non-business graduate students enrolled in a transdisciplinary entrepreneurship course.

A single case study design was used to explore how seven nonbusiness graduate students in a transdisciplinary entrepreneurial leadership course made sense of entrepreneurial content relevant to their academic interests and career aspirations. Data were collected through direct observations, semi-structured interviews and the administration of an entrepreneurial leadership proclivity assessment tool.

Through experiential learning intentionally centering entrepreneurship, graduate students acquire entrepreneurial knowledge in ways that enhance their agency and sense of empowerment without diluting or overriding their academic and/or professional intentions.

Sensemaking is framed as a pedagogical resource for fostering the integration of entrepreneurial content in transdisciplinary graduate courses and experiences in ways that align with and support the academic interests and career aspirations of individual students.

A novel entrepreneurial sensemaking approach to the integration of entrepreneurial content with transdisciplinary curricula that is directly responsive to calls for graduate education transformation is introduced.

This chapter begins with a brief introduction to the growing field of entrepreneurship education. Entrepreneurship education is considered as a framework for training students to be primarily agents of change rather than generators of economic wealth. Next, trends in experiential learning are explored with particular attention being given to service learning. Finally, the merits of a comprehensive, cross-disciplinary change curriculum that is grounded in the principles and practices of innovation and entrepreneurship and its experiential in design are argued.

Research universities are recognized as primary sources of the knowledge essential to the development of innovative solutions to a wide range of economic, social, and ecological problems that affect humankind. This utilitarian function of American higher education dates back to the creation of land grant institutions with the passing of the Morrill Act of 1862 (Lucas, 1994; Veysey, 1965). The prominent higher education historian John R. Thelin (2004) described the importance of this land grant legislation by stating, “Its institutional legacy was the accessible state college and university, characterized by a curriculum that was broad and utilitarian” (p. 76). Shifts in the research paradigm that followed the World War II placed further emphasis on applied research that was to be “directed toward some individual or group or societal need or use” (Stokes, 1997, p. 8). Most recently, the utilitarian function of higher education has become closely linked to the commercialization of knowledge and discovery. Specifically, the passing of the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, which allowed colleges and universities to take ownership of intellectual properties created in part or in full through federal funding, allowed the transfer of knowledge from higher education to society through market channels to become standard practice.