Managing Industry Sponsored Capstone for Learning Customer Satisfaction
Capstone ranges across the spectrum as to how it is taught at various universities. Regardless, capstone's purpose is to give the students an experience which includes technical education while emphasizing the aspects of: producing a product, planning, team work, project management, economics, safety for all, ethical behavior, and much more. Mechanical Engineering at the University of Kansas uses a three course capstone sequence. The first course targets fully preparing students so that they've seen and done a complete project before tackling their main capstone project. For the two following courses, this allows planning their capstone projects and focusing on actually doing their projects. For project management, two faculty members handle the management and technical aspects of the design process; and the Sponsor is the Client, who wants a final product for its customers. This requires students to trade off the conflicting demands of "two bosses" and a Client, and requires that students learn to make priority decisions to accomplish their projects. Challenges are to improve Sponsor engagement, better engage students in the first course, and help students address conflicting direction from multiple bosses.