The six teams of students presented the results of their yearlong projects on May 8 in the Hunt Atrium of Founders Hall.
Elon University senior engineering students put their classroom learning into practice through six capstone projects showcased May 8 in Founders Hall as part of the Engineering Senior Design course.
The 29 students were divided into teams and paired with faculty advisors who guided them throughout the yearlong process.
“These students got this project in August in the form of a two- or three-page document and an email address to contact, and they took it from there,” said Will Pluer, assistant professor of engineering. “They broke down their projects into subsystems and tasks, we had weekly scrum meetings where it felt like only little things were being achieved and eventually those little things turned into mockups in the fall and full prototypes this spring.”
One team partnered with Gilbarco Veeder-Root to improve security measures for gas station pumps that had experienced break-ins. The group added a sensor to the bottom of the machine to alert owners to unauthorized access, reinforced the bottom latch and installed an electrical component designed to preserve data during power outages.
Rahv Tupac-Yupanqui ’26, a mechanical engineering major from Virginia Beach, Virginia, said the project was a thorough culmination of years of coursework.
“We take classes where you do specific projects here and there, and eventually, down the line, it turns out that a skill, or many skills, that you learned on a specific project will help you do larger projects,” Tupac-Yupanqui said.
While students had worked with clients in previous engineering courses, Tupac-Yupanqui said the scale of the project and the level of communication with the company made this experience different.
“It feels like a huge privilege to be able to communicate with a company at such an intensive rate,” Tupac-Yupanqui said. “I’m really glad I got to do it because it gives me a really good perspective on what an engineering company does. Even though no engineering company works the same way, there is always a level of understanding that happens between engineers.”
Another team partnered with Driver Rehabilitation Services to redesign a Sure Grip vehicle driving system for people with physical impairments.
The original system had a “jerking” and rotational movement when pulled to accelerate the vehicle. Students redesigned the mechanism, so it moved back and forth along a single plane.
“Whenever you pulled it back for acceleration, instead of moving in a straight line forward and back, it would rotate a little bit toward the center of your chest,” said Wiley Falter ’26, a mechanical engineering major from Fayetteville, North Carolina. “It’s fine for a driver that has full arm strength, but quadriplegic drivers only have strength coming from their shoulder, and so everyone would push in. It made it really awkward to push it back out, get it back into idle and brake.”
Like Tupac-Yupanqui, Falter said working with a real client was one of the most valuable parts of the experience.
“It was cool to communicate with the engineers who work there,” Falter said. “We all really enjoyed that part the most because it gave you a view into the real world of engineering and not just the bubble of being in college. It was super fun to get really constructive criticism on everything that we did.”
Pluer said the hands-on, client-based experience is what makes the course unique.
“It’s really important for us to give our students real problems to tackle,” Pluer said. “We’re moving out of the classroom into careers, so we give them projects from clients that push them and make them realize that engineering is truly a service industry, serving others through design.”
