Capstone Design

Photo slide shows
of Senior Design Teams
Spring 2003
Fall 2003
Spring 2004
Fall 2004
Spring 2005
Fall 2005
Spring 2006
Fall 2006
Spring 2007
Fall 2007
Spring 2008

Apply your skills and jump-start your career

At Michigan Tech, you roll up your sleeves and get
your hands dirty. Employers state that Michigan Tech graduates are ready “to hit the ground running.”

Our Senior Design and Enterprise Programs are ideal transitions from classroom to career. They complement a rigorous academic program with intensive, innovative, and real-world projects. Michigan Tech’s students are well-prepared for their senior year through intensive hands-on lab experience during the 2nd and 3rd years, plus strong course work in the theory, analysis, and modeling of ECE problems and methods. Both programs feature students working on engineering design teams with faculty advisors and industry clients. Enterprise teams also develop new products to bring to the world.  Students are immersed in business-like environments geared to foster innovation in engineering design and undergraduate research.

Senior Design

Our—”Discover, Design, Deliver”— philosophy provides real-world design team experience to launch our graduates into their engineering careers.  You will be part of a student team working on an engineering project for an outside company. You will work with a faculty advisor and a company consultant. Unlike many schools, we devote a full academic year to Senior Design, on top of a full and rigorous academic curriculum. We provide formal instruction in project management, design principles, teamwork, documentation, intellectual property, budgeting, ethics, and other relevant topics. By the end of the year, each team has delivered design reviews, a final report, a formal end-of-project presentation, and “deliverables” to our industry partner. We tie student grades to successful deliverables, schedule, and budget. Senior Design gives you not only solid, practical experience but also a “foot in the door” of a big company that hires Michigan Tech’s graduates.

Matt McInnis, a Spring 2005 graduate from Kalamazoo, Michigan, worked on a Senior Design project that entailed two disciplines: electrical engineering and mechanical engineering. “My joint project was without a doubt my most valuable experience at Tech. Although occasionally stressful, I really feel like that was the point where the important things I had learned over the past four years came together, and it was great to finally put my skills into practice.”

Enterprise

Our unique Enterprise Program puts Michigan Tech at the forefront of engineering education in the nation. Enterprise provides invaluable working experience as you become an electrical or computer engineer. No other university does this (yet!)

Enterprises are high-tech engineering design companies run by MTU students from varying disciplines with a faculty advisor. Industry partners hire Enterprise teams to do engineering work. Enterprise teams also work on their own inventions, and students are included on patents—and have the potential to earn royalties for the products they help engineer.

You can tailor your degree toward one of your interests by joining one of our many enterprises. Our Enterprise teams work on innovative projects spanning a wide range of interests and inquiry, including: