An industry-sponsored capstone design course

The authors describe a year-long senior mechanical engineering design course that is run in cooperation with industry. Financial support from an industrial sponsor, along with regular contact between the industry representative and the student groups, presents a real-world setting for the course. Students must learn to work together to order from outside vendors, stay within a budget, and prepare for presentations. The Engineering Design Project gives about-to-graduate engineering students an experience which is, in an academic environment, as close as possible to the realities of how project engineering is practiced in an industrial or government organization. Because the class size is small, all students are able to at least vicariously share in the wide range of experience that any development of a new device must encounter