Ensuring The Success Of Competitive Engineering Design Projects Through A Centralized Operation

In 1997 Clarkson University created the SPEED (Student Projects for Engineering Experience and Design) program to centralize the operations of its competition-based engineering design project teams. This paper describes the benefits of centralizing the operations of competition-based engineering design projects. Benefits of centralization include institutionalizing the activities of the project teams, pooling limited resources, decreasing the administrative responsibilities of the faculty advisers, enhancing the project experiences, increasing the effectiveness at which project activities are used as recruiting and marketing agents, and integrating “extracurricular activities” into the curriculum. Best practices gained during the over four years of SPEED’s existence are also described.