Real-world engineering: a course for masters students headed for industry

This paper describes an experimental, project-oriented course whose technical content focuses on the interface between hardware and software. The underlying agenda for the course is to teach students - in one semester - as many skills as possible for succeeding in industrial engineering environments. In essence, we are functioning as part of a small company for one semester. The non-technical portion of the course focuses on communication in speaking and writing: within a project team, with rotating "project leaders ", among separate teams, and with the "CEO" (the first author). The students themselves are helping to create the project part of the course, and the Cornell Academic Technologies Center (via the second author) is supplying tools to enable and evaluate the communication portions of the course guest speakers from diverse branches of high-tech industry provide perspective and advice on career paths for graduates with engineering degrees.