Paper Authors

Abstract

NOTE: The first page of text has been automatically extracted and included below in lieu of an abstract

Session 1793

Taking Senior Design Course Projects to Market Ken Ports, Carmo D’Cruz, Muzaffar Shaikh, Carolyn Fausnaugh Florida Institute of Technology

Abstract This paper describes an innovative new program that is a synergistic combination of Florida Tech’s technology commercialization-related course offerings in Engineering Management, its Senior Design course curriculum, and its new business accelerator, Florida Tech Start. The program is designed for the subset of senior design course students who desire to leverage their design course experience by commercializing their innovative products and technologies and creating start-up companies.

Florida Tech’s engineering management curriculum offers innovative courses in technical marketing, high tech product strategy, fast cycle time product development & launch, and engineering entrepreneurship. In these case study courses, students develop real world marketing and business plans for commercializing innovative new products and technologies. Some of the innovative product development and technology commercialization ideas have won accolades at regional business idea pitching competitions.

Concurrently, Florida Tech’s intensive undergraduate engineering programs (in ECE, CS, ME, CE, ChE, AE and Ocean Engineering) have resulted in a number of outstanding crossfunctional Senior Design Projects. The Florida Tech Senior Design program has become highly coordinated across all the engineering departments and structured for improved quality and effectiveness. There is a growing interest by teams in commercializing the project results.

Florida Tech Start has just commenced operations as a business accelerator for high-tech ventures, and provides a networking forum for inventors, corporate sponsors, investors and business service providers. It is designed to facilitate the creation of start-up, technology-based, revenue generating ventures.

Working together, Florida Tech Start, the senior design sequence of courses, and the entrepreneurial curricular thread in engineering management provide a strong foundation and exciting opportunity for undergraduate students seeking to commercialize their student senior projects.

Introduction There has been a considerable demand for Engineering Entrepreneurship and Technology Commercialization in Brevard County, Florida. This is because of the available high tech talent due to the proximity of NASA / Kennedy Space Center, defense contractors such as Harris Corp., Northrop Grumman, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and the growing wireless and high tech industry in the Brevard area. There are a number of talented engineers who have the necessary

Proceedings of the 2004 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference and Exposition Copyright © 2004, American Society for Engineering Education

• Citation

• Format
  • APA
  • APA - LaTeX bibitem
  • MLA
  • MLA - LaTeX bibitem
  • Bibtex
  • EndNote - RIS

Ports, K., & Fausnaugh, C., & Shaikh, M., & D'Cruz, C. (2004, June), Taking Senior Design Course Projects To Market Paper presented at 2004 Annual Conference, Salt Lake City, Utah. 10.18260/1-2--13464