Students who completed an engineering capstone course shared details of their work this spring in an annual Elon University program that showcases solutions to real-world challenges faced by local companies and nonprofits.
The Animal Park at the Conservators Center in Burlington, N.C., needed help with a standardized design for its lion gate and an emergency close solution for a tiger gate.
Erosion and stormwater management is an issue for Christmount Retreat Camp and Conference Center in Black Mountain, N.C., which was hit last year by Hurricane Helene.
Driver Rehabilitation Services, a North Carolina company that provides driver evaluation and training services for adults who live with physical challenges, sought help in creating a window switch panel assembly for one of the vehicles it was retrofitting for a client.
And the American Society of Naval Engineers hosted a design competition this spring to promote electric-powered boats that would “go fast, for multiple miles, quietly.” Dozens of universities were represented at an April event outside of Virginia Beach where prototypes offered a potential peek at the future of naval propulsion.
What did all four have in common? Solutions provided by graduating seniors in Elon University’s Department of Engineering.
In the lead-up to May’s graduation, those seniors delivered public presentations to the university community as a culminating project for “Engineering Senior Design,” a course that matched 18 students, comprising five teams, with clients in need of engineering assistance.
The course provides students with hands-on opportunities to demonstrate their engineering, project management, and public speaking acumen through yearlong collaborations known as SPEED: Senior Projects in Elon Engineering Design, a signature aspect of Elon’s Bachelor of Science in Engineering degree program.
The latest SPEED presentations took place May 9, 2025, inside Hunt Atrium in Founders Hall.
“As the final results demonstrate, our students leave here with a year of experience under their belt of what it’s like to really work in an engineering team,” said Assistant Professor Will Pluer in the Department of Engineering. “We’re really proud of them for it.”
The presentations each spring also provide project partners – and prospective employers – with an advance look at emerging talent.
“Our students really get to practice what it’s like becoming an engineer,” said John Ring, director of engineering outreach in the Department of Engineering. “They get to engage with their stakeholders and learn about engineering culture, and how to do the things that you don’t typically get in an engineering class, like run an effective meeting and adopt agile project management skills. But our partners also get a talent pipeline, and we had partners here today that have hired our engineers … they’ve come back as attendees just to see what’s next.”
Reflections on SPEED by Engineering Majors in the Class of 2025
“Throughout this entire year, we’ve been able to work with some users of our actual product, which has just really opened our eyes … and it was a great experience to learning in-office skills, learning how to handle meetings, learning how to handle a boss, learning how to handle clients, and just keeping everyone on the same page. It was overall good practice for what the real world entails.”
Tim Henderson ’25
Madison, New Jersey
Project: Driver Rehabilitation Services
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“It was incredible to get real-world experience here. We paired up with companies and had to deliver a product, which was intimidating at first, but our advisors were incredible. They helped us through it all. We learned a lot through our failures, honestly. As engineering majors, we are very stubborn. Accepting failure and running with it and learning from it and just producing something that was even better than we had imagined? That was the best.”
Emmeline Roberts ’25
Ashland, Virginia
Project: Animal Park at the Conservators Center (Lion Gate Design)
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“One of the main things about senior design that is the most important part is getting into the shop and making things. Nothing you design is going to survive the first contact with whatever you’re doing. You’re always going to overlook something or something’s going to break, and you must figure out how to get around that. The problem-solving side of what all the groups have been doing is the most important part of being an engineer. To have something go wrong and then being able to engineer your way out of a problem is really, really important and a key learning step.”
Jack O’Donnell ’25
Easton, Maryland
Project: Promoting Electric Propulsion E-Boat Competition