The Innovation Quad

Partnership Through Projects 

Solving Real-World Problems

Have a great idea? Need a prototype or new perspective in solving a problem? If you’re a business, nonprofit or government organization, consider partnering with Elon Engineering.  The Elon Engineering Capstone Project Program is seeking partners to solve real-world problems.

What You’ll Get

  • ~1,000 hours of student team problem solving
  • Technical solutions with liberal arts creativity
  • Proof-of-concept through our third-year course, Research Methods
  • Prototype or project solutions through our Senior Engineering Design I & II courses
  • Intellectual property ownership
  • Corporate and organizational presence on campus
  • High return on investment for your sponsorship fee

How It Works

Our capstone project program is a full academic year commitment where sponsors engage with student teams coached by faculty advisers to solve problems.

  • Defining your need: Our sponsors bring real-world problems where the company or organization’s bottom line is not riding on a quick solution. The challenges our students work on are borne out of a need to prove-out an idea, look at the issue from a new perspective or do the detailed analysis necessary to move the project to the next level.
  • Scope the project: As a potential sponsor, you’ll meet with engineering faculty and staff to scope your project and ideas and determine how our students would work to provide a solution(s) across an academic year. Projects often can be placed in two categories, each resulting in different deliverables.
  • Great idea that needs more investigation: Your project could be well-suited for our third-year engineering students’ Research Methods course. This year-long course investigates ideas and proof of concepts. Previous examples include evaluating and recommending quality detection systems for an international heat exchanger supplier.
  • Great idea that needs more time and resources to complete: For projects beyond the proof-of-concept phase, ready for further development or prototyping, our fourth-year engineering students can advance your work as a capstone engineering design project. A strong recent example is our constructed floating wetlands project, where students developed low-cost sensors to evaluate the effectiveness of floating constructed wetlands.
  • Let’s get started: With a fully scoped project, your organization’s project leader begins working with a student team at the beginning of the fall semester around mid-August. Following an end of semester report, work resumes in the spring and concludes with a final report prior to the semester’s end in mid-May.

Let Elon Engineering Find Solutions That Work for You

Elon Engineering provides expert faculty devoted to teaching, an emphasis on student research, sustained focus on hands-on learning and the innovative use of technology to solve problems. Our students and faculty are working in diverse areas that range from water quality to silicon carbide wafers. We seek mutually beneficial partnerships with organizations that value learning and achieving. We hope you’ll consider joining with us.

Contact Us

For more information about partnering with Elon Engineering, please contact: