Senior design projects with industry

For more than seven years the Binghamton University Electrical Engineering Department has had a capstone 1-semester design course, in cooperation with local industry, in its core curriculum. Projects are requested from local companies; students select their teams and projects and the teams meet with their company and faculty advisors every week. Two design reviews, held on company premises and attended by several company engineers, are held for each project. Final presentations and final reports complete the projects. The course has evolved from a multi-instructor fragmented course with low success rates, to a single-instructor course with a 70% success rate in terms of delivering working prototypes. This paper describes the original goals and structure of the course and how it has evolved over the years as specific problem areas were addressed and overcome, leading to the current course goals and structure. Also, assessment techniques are described, along with a list of projects and seminar topics from spring, 1998. ABET 2000 will require course changes. The planned modifications are described, as well as the rationale and plan to take this course from a one-semester, two-credit course to a two-semester, eight-credit course.