Joint industry/academic sponsored project course

The authors present their experiences with a senior electrical engineering design course that is offered with joint support by a large engineering consulting firm. The company provides the requirements for a computer program to be used in their engineering design work. The students develop specifications which must be approved by the company before the students proceed to develop the software and documentation. The computer program must pass a series of acceptance and verification tests prior to submission to the company, which then performs its own tests. An important factor in determining the students´ grades is the company´s satisfaction with the software.<>