Work in progress — Skunk works Immersion Design Experience, utilization of the Lockheed Martin Skunk Works Design process to teach innovation

Southern Methodist University has partnered with Lockheed Martin Skunk Works^® to develop a program that emphasizes innovation while challenging students to excel. This paper discusses high pressure design challenges, or Immersion Design Experiences (IDE) which use components of the Skunk Works Design philosophy, modified for academia. IDEs take interdisciplinary teams comprised not only of engineering students, but students from across the academic spectrum, and have them design, fabricate and test a prototype that solves their assigned problem. A typical IDE is 10 days long, and is held over the long breaks between semesters. The time constraints and difficulties of the projects require full time attention to the design and encourage students to find innovative solutions necessitating that they are run during the breaks in the academic calendar. This paper will discuss these projects and report the results from our first IDE.