Integrated Team Projects as Part of the Undergraduate Curriculum

This paper describes an original fourth-semester activity, for students in engineering, which now has been running for eight years. It is a program of multidisciplinary team projects, for about 50 students, which include industrial, social, and economic implications. Guidance is provided by 10-15 members of the academic and scientific staff, as well as by 5-10 engineers from industry. The projects are conducted at a rather high technical level: the last two subjects were, respectively, a geostationary communications satellite and a remote-sensing satellite. The accent is not only on technical aspects, but also on the application in various fields of human activity. The student is supposed to devote about 10 h per week to the project. The program is received every year with a great deal of enthusiasm by the students.