Having an entrepreneurial mindset doesn’t necessarily mean starting a business.
“It’s a way of thinking,” said Josh Gargac, BSME ’10. “It’s thinking like an entrepreneur would,”
Gargac, associate professor of mechanical engineering in the Ohio Northern University T.J. Smull College of Engineering, was recently named a 2025 KEEN Rising Star. This award recognizes exceptional junior engineering faculty who inspire an entrepreneurial mindset in their students.
The Kern Entrepreneurial Engineering Network (KEEN) is a partnership of more than 70 colleges and universities across the U.S. Gargac was one of only three KEEN Rising Stars selected nationally this year.
The entrepreneurial focus, said Gargac, “is a recognition that engineering education is more than math, physics, and technical solutions.”
“Everything that is designed is used by people and benefits people in some way,” he explained. With AI taking over more technical tasks, it’s human insight and creativity that will set future engineers apart.
Rethinking engineering education
The award highlights several of Gargac’s innovations that promote the entrepreneurial mindset in the classroom.
In one mechanical engineering class, for example, his students worked on projects aimed at improving daily life for individuals with physical disabilities. The assignment began with a photo journal of motion-based devices, followed by case studies of a real people facing mobility issues.
The goal was to use what KEEN defines as “Three Cs”—curiosity, connection, and creating value to create a design that might help the person overcome limitations. One standout idea was a moveable easel for an artist with fibromyalgia to reduce arm strain while painting.
While students didn’t build the devices in this technical course, the emphasis was on creating value through design.
In another activity, Gargac incorporated some of his son’s old construction toys to help students visualize how mechanical systems move in three dimensions. While students built equations and kinetic diagrams, the toys offered a tactile, visual element to deepen understanding.
“Just looking at a picture it’s sometimes hard to see exactly how something moves,” he said.
Learning from failure
A key part of Gargac’s approach involves mastery-based learning, which focuses on learning through iteration and failure.
“More and more, traditional assessment methods in education reinforce that failure is inherently negative and should be avoided at all costs,” he said. “That’s opposed to entrepreneurial thinking where you have to keep trying things. You take little steps and sometimes fail, but you learn from it.”
So, he explained, instead of earning a C grade through partial credit, Gargac’s students are encouraged to demonstrate true understanding and skill mastery. Every student taking the course will have mastered some of the material.
“It actually requires students to have a better understanding,” he said. “They can look at a problem and say ‘I mastered this. I can demonstrate that I understand this.’”
Gargac has been collaborating with colleagues at ONU and other institutions to develop ways to assess mastery-based learning more effectively.
Engineering for the real world
In his research, Gargac is also committed to human-centered design. He and a student team are evaluating ways to adapt the Nintendo Switch for use in physical therapy. Their concept involves large, framed buttons to allow patients to perform therapeutic motions while engaging in gameplay.
Outside the classroom, Gargac mentors elementary children through the Destination Imagination program, which develops creative problem solving and STEM skills. He and wife, Jenny (Pelton) Gargac, BA ’10, are also busy raising their own four children, with a fifth on the way.
Even his personal pursuits reflect the entrepreneurial mindset. Gargac, an avid runner, didn’t finish his first marathon in 2024, but learned from the experience and achieved a personal-best finish in a September 2025 race.
“That’s mastery-based learning,” he said with a laugh.
A rising star among rising stars
An ONU mechanical engineering alumnus, Gargac has fully embraced the university’s strong entrepreneurial culture since returning five years ago.
He joins a growing list of ONU faculty recognized as KEEN Rising Stars, including Heath LeBlanc, professor of electrical and computer engineering and department chair; Blake Hylton, associate professor of mechanical engineering and department chair; and, Stephany Coffman-Wolph, assistant professor of computer science. ONU is the only university in the country to have more than two faculty members named Rising Stars.
“It’s just an awesome engineering program,” Gargac said. “A lot of what I’m being recognized for comes from team efforts. When you’re working with incredible people, the quality of what you produce is really high.”