Sponsoring a project allows you to contribute to educating the next generation of electrical and computer engineers by offering them a real-world industry experience, while simultaneously advancing long-term projects or back burner ideas.
Benefits
- Branding/Visibility within the ECE Capstone Design space and electronic advertisement on course website and materials.
- Year-long recruitment – your design/engineering team will get to work closely with a team of 4-6 graduating seniors for one academic year.
- Move forward your innovative idea or back-burner project
- Interact with potential future employees
- Gain a fresh set of ideas and designs from talented students
- Support the department of Electrical and computer Engineering at the University of Kentucky
Scope
Even though these are experienced senior students and our project expectations are high, these are still student projects in a course context. Within the framework of the course, all projects are conducted on a best-effort basis by students, guided by the instructor team and in close collaboration with the sponsor. The sponsor should understand that our primary purpose is educational; as such, exploratory or proof-of-concept projects can be quite successful. Proposed projects should never be in the critical path of a sponsor’s commercial activities or business operations.
Mentorship
Sponsors are expected to identify a project mentor to act as a point of contact for the senior design team, answer questions, and meet regularly with the team to advise them. The mentor should be prepared to meet every week for about 30 minutes with the team
Intellectual Property (IP)
External sponsors maintains ownership of IP created for the project, but students are granted a non-exclusive license to the IP for research and educational purposes.
Non-disclosure agreements
Confidentiality agreements can be implemented if needed, and UK has a standard template for student confidentiality for projects associated with courses. Please keep in mind that ECE Senior Capstone Design Day and other presentations and prototype demonstrations is open to the public that project information must be shared with other Students and professors in the Course to meet the Course requirement.
Cost
Capstone Design Projects require a project-sized donation to cover materials for the prototype development and general UK ECE Capstone program contribution. The materials part will be directly available to your team to cover the cost of their prototype development. The additional gift will be used to improve facilities, provide training, and cover program costs related to UK ECE Capstone.
Suggested Funding Tiers are
- Small Project: $500 Materials Budget + $250 Capstone Donation
- Medium Project: $1000 Materials Budget + $500 Capstone Donation
- Large Project: $2000 Materials Budget + $1000 Capstone Donation
- Custom Budget: Your materials Budget + (suggested 50%) Capstone Donation
Teams are selected usually by the second week of the semester a project starts. Donations need to be sent to UK ECE Capstone Design at this point, latest one month after the start of the semester, September 20 for a Fall start and February 10 for a Spring start. Please note that 100% of your support is deemed tax deductible.
Resources
Any physical sponsor resources such as equipment and materials must be fully available at the onset of the project. Projects which require not-yet-available resources should be delayed until the next cycle.