Courses
Featured Courses | Fall 2021
TE100 – Introduction to Innovation, Leadership, and Engineering Entrepreneurship
1 credit hr. | Instructor: Keilin Jahnke | Syllabus
Students will learn about innovation, identify key attributes of innovation leadership, and practice innovation leadership personally and professionally. Students will identify opportunities and work in teams to address them, practicing leadership and followership and honing their written and verbal presentation skills. Students also complete a personal plan for continuing to develop their innovation leadership skills. Open to all majors.
TE200 – Introduction to Innovation – Just for Innovation LLC Residents
1 credit hr. | Instructors: Chris Murphy, Keilin Jahnke, Samantha Koon, and Marissa Siero
Learn about innovation, identify key attributes of innovation leadership, and practice innovation leadership personally and professionally. Identify opportunities and work in teams to address them, practice leadership and followership and hone your written and verbal presentation skills.
TE230 – Design Thinking/Need-Finding
3 credit hrs. | Instructor: David Weightman
User-Oriented Collaborative Design: Students develop detailed concepts and models of authentic new products and services. Our focus is on user-oriented, collaborative approaches to design and seeking holistic solutions integrating user and functional perspectives. We emphasize the importance of process and the development of strategies. Students observe and engage people to develop a deep understanding of their values and the patterns of their lives. They work collaboratively in a studio environment to create a shared understanding of the people they design for (and with) and the product ideas they develop. Topics covered include design thinking, ethnographic methods, concept development and interaction design. This course offers an intensive design and team work experience, focused on understanding customer needs.
TE250 – From Idea to Enterprise
2 credit hrs. | Instructor: John Thode
Examines the fundamentals of technology entrepreneurship and addresses critical areas of the entrepreneurial process such as: problem and solution identification; validation of product-market fit; market assessment; team formation; product development; intellectual property; financing a technology-based startup. This class combines lecture, discussion & case studies, and is built around a hands-on group project leveraging the lean startup methodology from the National Science Foundation I-Corps program. The class is intended for all students of all disciplines interested in technology entrepreneurship.
TE333 – Creativity, Innovation, Vision
4 credit hrs. | Instructor: Keilin Jahnke
Personal creativity enhancement via exploration of the nature of creativity, how creativity works, and how to envision what others may not. Practice of techniques and processes to enhance personal and group creativity and to nurture a creative lifestyle. Application to a major term project providing the opportunity to move an idea, product, process or service from vision to reality.
TE360/460 – Lectures in Engineering Entrepreneurship
1 credit hr. | Instructor: Chris Harbourt, Ryan Shelton
Hear from a different guest speaker each week! Entrepreneurs and innovators will speak about a variety of topics including evaluation of technologies and business ideas in general; commercializing new technologies; financing through private and public sources; legal issues; product development; marketing; and more.
TE401 – Augmented Listening and Audio
1-4 credit hrs. | Instructors: Andy Singer, Ryan Corey
Interested in audio, signal processing, hearing aids and listening tech, embedded hardware and software, industrial design, VR/AR and more? You can pursue individual research in a variety of fields in this project based course. If interested, please contact Ryan Corey at corey1@illinois.edu.
TE450 – Startups: Incorporation, Funding, Contracts, & Intellectual Property
3 credit hrs. | Instructor: Joe Barich
Explores how legal tools may be used in the construction and successful operation of your company to deliver the next great product to market. Topics covered in the class include: issues with business formation, funding, intellectual property, non-disclosure agreements, contracts, and other corporate legal issues particularly impacting startups.
TE461 – Technology Entrepreneurship
3 credit hrs. | Instructor: Brian Lilly
Critical factors affecting technology-based ventures: opportunity assessment; the entrepreneurial process; founders and team building; preparation of a business plan including market research, marketing and sales, finance, and manufacturing considerations. Students must have an idea for a new venture to participate in the course, and must be prepared to develop this new venture idea as part of the course.
TE498 – Illinois Deep Tech Accelerator
4 credit hrs. | Instructor: John Thode
Want to develop a desirable, viable and feasible business model that leverages your technology? This academic-based startup accelerator will provide teams the tools and coaching to enable them to discover a roadmap to successfully commercialize their innovations and acquire SBIR/STTR grants or institutional investment. Learn more and apply here.
TE565 – Technology, Innovation, & Strategy
2 credit hrs. | Instructor: Sanjiv Chopra
Concepts and frameworks for analyzing how firms can create, commercialize and capture value from technology-based products and services. Business, commercialization, and management aspects of technology. Emphasis on reasons that existing firms or startups which have successfully commercialized products or services fail to sustain their success as technology changes and evolves. Restricted to grad students.
TE566 – Finance for Engineering Management
2 credit hrs. | Instructor: Brian Lilly
Cornerstone financial concepts for engineering management to enable analysis of engineering projects from a financial perspective: income statements; the balance sheet; cash flow statements; corporate organization; the time value of money; net present value; discounted cash flow analysis; portfolio theory. Restricted to grad students.
TE567– Venture Funded Startups
1 credit hr. | Instructor: Sanjiv Chopra
Concepts, tools, and language used by venture capitalists (VCs). Venture-scale opportunity assessment and articulation; venture capital financing and valuation; deal structure; term sheets; financial plans for startups; customer development and marketing; product iterations; sales execution. Restricted to grad students.
TE598 – Advanced Creativity
4 credit hrs. | Instructor: Keilin Jahnke
Exploration of concepts and theories in creativity and innovation with application of techniques and processes in order to enhance creativity. Emphasis on personalized learning objectives based on individual fields of study culminating in a major project with the opportunity to move a technical idea from vision to reality.
TEC Courses
We're Here to Help!
For questions about TEC courses, certificates, or the ILEE BS Degree, please contact Tara Flesner, TEC Office Manager, at the following email address or phone number. You'll receive a quick response during normal business hours.
Email: tec@illinois.edu
Phone: 217-244-3124