Bringing a Viable Product to Investors Utilizing Senior Engineering Student Interns

A four year teaching effort has been underway at the College of Engineering at a private university to develop, build and test a proprietary medical device. This ongoing project has involved six capstone projects consisting of 25 senior undergraduate students plus five independent intern students to do specific studies, analyses and building/testing assignments. It has been a team collaboration among members from five disciplines --namely, the engineering professors (primarily the Dean of the College of Engineering and the Chair of the Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Department), the CEO of a start-up entrepreneurial for-profit corporation, the owner and president of an electronic manufacturing company, a local medical practitioner (professional clinical audiologist), and a member of an initial capstone project student team. The first three years of this undertaking was presented at the 2014 ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition in Indianapolis, Indiana: Teaching Engineering Project Management via Capstone Designs that Develop a Viable Product. The essence of that presentation is contained herein. This paper presents the work accomplished during the 2014/2015 academic year when it had been decided to transfer from a capstone based approach to an internship based approach for the continuing development of the medical product. Although the principles of project management and engineering design were well grasped by the students, lack of product completion plagued the capstones. The specific reasons for this capstone-tointernship shift, and the resultant progresses, are discussed in this paper.