The Schools of Business, Trades and Technology faculty members offer a service where students in their final year do full-term project work or assignments that may be useful and/or of interest to you - at no salary cost.
A sponsor is one who provides the setting for a real-world problem to form the basis of the student project. Some college staff may wish to be project sponsors for the current academic term. After sponsorship is established, faculty mentors may add additional activities depending on the expected learning to be achieved. It is a year-long process with three phases.
Some staff may have back-burner projects that are non-mission critical but can add value to their service and be a learning experience for students. In other cases, there is simply a pet idea to explore. Projects can involve a combination of information/database, simulation, computer forensics, network/security, internet/intranet/e-commerce, electrical, electronic, electromechanical, robotic, control, and automation systems. Students can design, test, and evaluate a mock up of a proposed or alternative system that enterprise is planning to commission. There is no salary cost. However, we ask that sponsors bear other costs for incidentals, such as travel, preparation of reports and presentations, and program expenses. Sponsors retain spending authorization. A college sponsor will need authorization from her or his budget head to sponsor a college project. Alternatively, a college employee may sponsor a project as an outside project beyond college duties. In this case, the sponsor will be an enterprise sponsor instead of a college sponsor. The sponsor must also commit to nominal contact time with the students for site visits, status meetings, technical reviews and final presentation.
You may wish to discuss project sponsorship with the co-ordinator or one of our faculty mentors. The first step is a fact-finding discussion to clarify enterprise goals, challenges, and needs. If there is interest to continue, we invite you to make a request for proposal (RFP). In this case, we will draft the RFP for your review to check if it captures your needs. We will send an establishment proposal in response to the RFP. It will include:
A faculty mentor will guide a team of 2 to 4 students to plan and execute the project. The mentor may add additional activities depending on the expected learning to be achieved.
Please complete the RFP Form. You may prefer to initially discuss your enterprise needs and /or project request informally with the co-ordinator.
The formal step for making a request is to use the RFP form.
The co-ordinator or mentor will respond to the request with a brief proposal to handle your request. You may also negotiate refinements to the proposal we provide.
We will post the finalized proposal for student selection in early September, and will inform you by October 1 if there is a student team for your project.
For additional information that describes process and timelines, download the Sponsor Facts in Adobe PDF format.
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