1. Final Year Projects Dr. Jeyakesavan Veerasamy Director of CS Senior Design Program University of Texas at Dallas, USA jeyv@utdallas.edu

2. Agenda • Final year projects @ UT Dallas • What can you do in your college? • Preparing students for final year projects

3. CS final year projects @ UT Dallas • Almost all projects are industry sponsored. • We had ~18 industry projects in Spring 2012 term. • Typically 4 students/team. • Industry pays $8000/project, so they expect results! • Industry mentor is actively involved • conducts weekly or biweekly meetings • Faculty mentor has limited project manager role. • Companies of all sizes: 1 person business to MNCs. • Lot of repeat customers & students get jobs too. • Final grade is decided by faculty mentor based on the project’s success and each student’s effort.

4. Industry projects: Process 2 or 3 months before each term: • Soliciting projects from industry First 2 weeks of the term: • Presentation of projects to students • Students form the teams & indicate “favourite” projects. • Project assignments  teams • Kickoff meeting with industry • NDA and IP agreements Remaining term: • Students write “Project Proposal / Contract” • typically use 3 milestones (~1 month each) • Weekly meetings or conference calls End of term: Senior Design Day Celebration: • Presentations & Poster session • All local industry folks are invited (50 to 100 attendees) • Awards to best projects

5. What can you do in your college? • Achieve 100% industry projects • Direct solicitation of projects from industry • Service projects for college and local community • Tackling “Trust factor”: Use your alumni to get started • Track progress & ensure “reasonable” success? • Encourage a mix of superstars & average students in each team • Project success & students’ work  course grade • Charge companies for projects? • Use latest technologies if students want to do their own projects: • Smart phone applications & games • Use the cloud as the backend

6. Making students ready for final year projects • Create passion for programming right from the start. • Use the latest free tools in labs & make it exciting to learn: • TurboC++, NotePad  Alice, NetBeans/Visual Studio/… • Showcase a few successful projects for incoming students • Highlight team-effort – every one need not know all the latest technologies. • Suggest a few extra projects in each course and encourage more students to do them. • PSG Tech has a lot of enthusiastic students – how to spread that excitement further? • Encourage more students to work with industry (internships?) in college breaks. • May need additional passionate staff /resources

7. Questions & Answersjeyv@utdallas.edu