Experiences In Capstone Design Projects: Partnerships With Industrial Sponsors

Capstone design projects in the department provide student teams opportunities to create engineering solutions to problems identified and sponsored by industrial partners. A partnership relationship model for achieving engineering education goals, which is initiated between the department and the sponsor during discussions prior to student involvement, is the central theme that forms realizable expectations for student design projects. Experiences from 32 student project design teams over the past three years provide the basis for perspectives and insights on what is important for achieving a successful partnership and how to improve the odds for a successful student design project. Summaries from several actual student projects suggest the scope, depth, and expectations that have yielded success, plus some that haven’t been so successful along with diagnostic suggestions as to the cause and how to improve. A table shows the categories of sponsors, design team size, and key design goals for these student projects, plus an assessment of the success and engineering design quality for each project. A brochure is described that was created to concisely convey the partnership concept to prospective sponsors of student design projects. This tool has been very useful to convey quickly and painlessly the partnership expectations and general responsibilities when initially contacting potential industry sponsors. Experience indicates that partnerships with industry sponsors yield meaningful educational experiences for engineering students, allow industry to explore an idea with minimal commitment, create friends for the university, and can lead to permanent employment for students following graduation.