Sponsorship helps our students, and it helps our sponsors. Over the years, we have had a variety of types of projects and sponsor arrangements. A wide range of projects is suitable. The ideal project challenges the students both creatively and technically. The sponsorship process is a collaborative effort between the sponsor and the Senior Capstone Design Program. Senior projects last for two semesters, typically lasting from August-May or January-December.
Top six reasons you should sponsor a mechanical engineering Senior Capstone Design project at Texas A&M University:
- To create deep and continued awareness of your company with students. Project teams give midterm briefs about the nature of their project
- To pre-train and interview, in depth, potential employees.
- To augment and leverage your workforce via cost effective labor.
- To provide mentorship and leadership development opportunities for your current employees.
- To create deep and continued awareness of your company with faculty.
- To take an active role in shaping the design curriculum.
The type of sponsor support requested depends on the project and is best determined by contacting us directly. A standard university capstone agreement has also been developed, which gives students the ability to sign nondisclosure agreements and intellectual property releases upon request. A sponsor will provide financial support, at least one technical contact for the project, and a project idea.
For more detailed information or to start the process of becoming a sponsor, please contact: meen-capstone@tamu.edu.
Learn more about the Senior Capstone Design Program
Sponsor Testimonials
The capstone programs brings to companies the creativity, energy and enthusiasm of seniors. You are likely to get fresh ideas from the team that you would not generate internally. It was invigorating to meet with the students and experience their energy and enthusiasm. They energized our staff about the project. We made progress on a project that we long wanted to tackle but could never find time. The students are being taught processes to evaluate the needs of a project, develop design criteria, rank the needs, and decide on priorities in the design. It was instructive for us to learn the latest processes being taught to students. From a recruiting perspective, a capstone project is a great opportunity. Students pick their projects, so you know they are interested in your work. You get to meet with them several times a semester and see them in action. No interview can match the insight you will get from these interactions.
Partnering with Texas A&M to sponsor capstone projects has been very value adding for BP. The students are always eager to provide professional level engineering services as they work on solving real BP problems. Though every sponsorship semester, BP has received professional level engineering output which has been implemented by our design engineers. If the students were not actively working on these important projects, full time BP engineers would be working them. I believe the program is a win/win learning opportunity. Students gain experience of what it is like to work a real engineering project in industry, while industry has to opportunity to baseline the competency/capability of graduating engineers – something than is continuously increasing!