Thank you for your interest in sponsoring a Capstone Design Project in our program, labeled ELECOMP CAPSTONE, involving a team of 2-4 electrical (ELE) and computer (COMP) senior engineering students. Project sponsorship is a great way for a company or other organization to partner with our program for the mutual benefit of our students and your enterprise. Our program effectively expands your resources by taking advantage of the skills, energy and enthusiasm of our talented electrical and computer engineers in their senior year.

Potential benefits to sponsors include:

• An opportunity to initiate elective research/design projects
• Benefiting from the creative and innovative talent of students trained in the latest technologies and eager to find answers to the sponsor’s problems
• Creation of innovative & competitive prototypes, with creative ideas
• Ownership of intellectual property
• Recruitment of potential employees after an 8-month “interview process.”
• Positively impacting the capstone design program with the sponsorship grant

If you have a project in mind and are wondering how it might fit with our ELECOMP Capstone Design Program, ask yourself the following questions:

Is the project appropriate in scope for a group of 2-4 students to accomplish in eight months of part time work?

Teams are made up of between 2-4 students, but bigger teams may be considered on a case-by-case basis. Typical design projects are estimated at 900 to 1200 engineering hours (design, build, and test). Each student works between 10 and 15 hours per week on the project, and up to 30 hours per week during the winter break of 4 weeks. Detailed Log Books are maintained, as done in the real world.

Ideal projects for Capstone Design are company problems that are strategic in nature but may be put on the back burner for lack of time or appropriate staffing to address them. While these are not the mission-critical problems that companies must focus on in order to survive, tackling these problems could significantly and positively affect the bottom line, provide a foundation for explosive growth or enable successful entry into a profitable new business area.

Will the design project result in a hardware solution?

Some design projects require that student teams build a working prototype that must be tested against customer requirements and engineering specifications. The completed project hardware may be a final design that is immediately implemented in your company or may be a proof-of-concept prototype, which will have a significant economic impact.

Is it an “engineering” design project?

Student teams are expected to utilize competencies developed in their first three (or more) years in the program. For more details, see the curriculum of the electrical and computer engineering curriculums.

Capstone design projects in electrical and computer engineering should require some level of engineering analysis, be it hand calculations, computer simulations, equipment selection, analysis, sensors, programming, data collection, control system design, etc.

Can your organization assign a Technical Director who will direct and mentor the student design team?

A company engineer must be available to interface with the students and Program Director. This individual is called the Technical Director of the project, and is the subject matter expert. Weekly meetings (personal or Skype) of about 2-hours are required to aggressively move the project forward. This has given excellent results in past years. Immediate questions by the students can be answered by email contact at any time during the week. Weekly Progress Reports are also submitted to the Technical Director. For complete guidelines, go to Technical Director Responsibilities

Is the project worth a financial sponsorship commitment?

A sponsorship grant is required for each project.  Sponsor funds primarily support fabrication and testing of prototype hardware produced by the student team. In exchange for the grant, which would typically fund less than a week’s worth of a consulting engineer’s time, sponsors receive approximately 900 to 1,200 student engineering hours All hardware purchased with sponsor funds becomes the property of the sponsor at the end of the project period.

Will the project fit the time line?

Design begins in September and concludes in December

Fabrication and testing begins in January and concludes in April.

Must the designed solution work?

Our students are creative, talented, and driven, and often come up with novel, practical design solutions that are of great benefit to the industrial sponsor.  However, we cannot guarantee or provide warranty for any work done by our students, and suggest that a viable design solution for the given capstone project not be critical to your enterprise.

Additional questions? Please see the document on Frequently Asked Questions.

If you are interested in sponsoring a capstone project, or would just like some more information about the program, please contact the Capstone Program Director