Senior Design Partnership
Project Overview
A senior design project is a team-based, hands-on experience where students tackle real-world engineering challenges. It’s the final step in the undergraduate program, where students put everything they’ve learned into practice. Companies seeking a senior design partnership should first identify a problem and work with faculty and students to come up with design ideas, choose the best solution, and develop it while keeping things like safety, ethics, and cost in mind. Along the way, teams manage their project like professionals — tracking progress, meeting deadlines, and communicating with industry and faculty mentors. Each team presents their work, from proposal to final report, by the end of the course.
- Roughly 180 hours of engineering effort per student from a motivated, well-prepared design team.
- Fresh perspectives that may lead to novel or improved solutions.
- A comprehensive final design report and, in many cases, a functional prototype.
- Early recruiting exposure to graduating students.
- Indirect access to university facilities and expertise through the student team.
- Practice with a user-centered engineering design process.
- Experience working on authentic industry problems.
- Application of engineering fundamentals in a real-world context.
- Mentorship and feedback from practicing engineers.
Characteristics of Successful Projects
To be effective educationally and valuable to the sponsor, projects should:
- Be driven by engineering analysis and include modeling familiar from core coursework. Multi-disciplinary teams that include the following majors may be considered: biomedical engineering, chemical and biological engineering, civil and environmental engineering, computer engineering, computer science, electrical engineering, geological engineering, industrial engineering, mechanical engineering, metallurgical engineering, and mining engineering.
- Be open-ended, encouraging creativity and multiple viable solutions.
- Provide sufficient technical challenge while remaining feasible for a 4–6 student team.
- Allow development of a physical or virtual prototype (CAD models or maker-space builds are ideal).
- Have appropriate scope and complexity, enabling both individual and team contributions.
- Be completable within a two-semester academic year. (Civil engineering and mining engineering are one-semester courses.)
- Provide a clear project description outlining background, objectives, and expected outcomes.
- Designate a knowledgeable company representative to advise the team.
- Participate in design reviews and final presentations.
- Cover costs associated with prototype development, materials and travel, with a budget aligned to project scope.
- Supply a team of senior student engineers.
- Provide access to campus resources such as libraries, computing, and fabrication facilities.
- Manage course logistics, instruction, and assessment.
- Co-advise teams alongside the sponsor.
Intellectual Property
Under Board of Regents policy, students initially retain ownership of intellectual property they create. Sponsors may request an assignment of student-generated intellectual property at the start of the project using the approved agreement. Any resulting patent applications must list contributing students as inventors where their contributions rise to the level of inventorship under applicable U.S. patent law and USPTO standards. Questions regarding IP policy should be directed to Economic.Development@sdsmt.edu.
Confidentiality
Projects ideally require minimal confidential information. Where appropriate, a one-way nondisclosure agreement (NDA) may be used between the sponsor and participating students using the approved form. Students are bound by the terms of the NDA; however, because projects occur within an academic course, final reports and presentations are required. These deliverables will be designed to protect the sponsor’s confidential information by omitting or redacting sensitive content.
Project Application
Submit your project proposal via the Senior Design Partnership Application Form and it will be reviewed for consideration.
Note: Some senior design courses are one semester; the majority are two semesters.
Project Schedule
Early Bird Project Submission: July 1
Project Review Begins: July 15
Final Project Submission Deadline: August 19
Company Project Pitches to Students: August 25
Companies Notified of Project Selection: September 8
Project Design Reviews with Companies:
For 2-semester projects - October/November/February
For 1-semester projects - December
Past Senior Design Partner Successes
Project Goal: Design a water pump intake screen that would clean itself.
Technical Areas: CAD, fluid dynamics, flow modeling.
Number of Students on Team: 2 Mechanical Engineering, 1 Electrical Engineering, 1 Computer Science.
Project Goal: Design, build, and test a flexible wing specifically designed for supersonic flight.
Technical Areas: Machine design, aerodynamics, material science.
Number of Students on Team: 4 Mechanical Engineering.
Project Goal: A project that uses whisper.cpp to convert speech audio files to text and then matches that text to defined intents.
Technical Areas: C++, x86, Ubuntu Linux, HTML5.
Number of Students on Team: 3 Computer Science/Computer Engineering.
Project Goal: Tested an algorithm and hardware together that was designed by a previous senior design team using a phased array antenna system to locate a signal as quickly as possible.
Technical Areas: Antenna theory, signal processing, and RF technologies.
Number of Students on Team: 4 Electrical Engineering, 2 Computer Science, 1 Computer Engineering.