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Frequently Asked Questions for Senior Project Sponsors

Is your organization interested in sponsoring a Senior Project? Browse the FAQ's below for more information.

• What is Senior Project?
  
  Senior Project is a capstone course completed by every Software Engineering senior. Small teams of students are assigned to solve challenging, real-world software issues for companies and organizations. External corporate and non-profit sponsors submit proposals for projects that teams of 4 or 5 students will work on.

  Over the course of two quarters, each team works with the customer, applying the software engineering skills that the students learned in class and on co-op. They carry the project from inception through an entire software development lifecycle. The end result is a functional software tool ready for use by the organization.

• How will my organization benefit from sponsoring a Senior Project?
  
  • Help educate the next generation of software engineers who you might want as employees
  • Get the benefits of any work the team does in clarifying your problem, designing a solution, and building a working system
  • Have fun working with a team of software engineering students who are excited about the challenge of your project
• What is the size, scope and duration of these projects?
  
  Teams generally consist of 4-5 seniors. Students work on the project for two quarters (about 20 weeks). During this time, each team member is expected to devote an average of 10-15 hours/week on the project.

  Project scope should be determined with this level of effort in mind. Also remember that it is unlikely that students will have detailed knowledge of the sponsor's domain. Time for acquiring this knowledge must be factored into the project’s scope.

  We are interested in projects from any application domain, and of any type including web-based systems, desktop applications, or embedded projects. A project should require the team to demonstrate their software engineering skills including requirements elicitation, design and implementation, and deployment. Our past experience has shown that web-based projects which are only client-side website development or a web interface to a database without significant backend business logic are too small in scope to require the students to demonstrate this full range of skills. If your project has a scope beyond software, we can work with the other colleges at RIT to create a multi-disciplinary team that covers all the aspects of your project.

• Who works on the project?
  
  The project sponsor works with a senior team and their faculty mentor.

  The students are responsible for the completion of the project. The faculty member acts primarily as guide, mentor, and coach. The faculty member will not actively manage the project, nor will he or she assume any technical role other than general consultant.

• What process is followed over the course of the project?
  
  The ideal project is one where the student team takes a project from requirements elicitation and analysis through architecture and design to implementation, testing, and delivery over the course of two quarters. The specific processes each team uses are part of the negotiation between the sponsor and team, under the guidance of the team’s faculty mentor. If your organization requires specific standards or processes, please include them in your proposal description.
• What are my responsibilities and commitments as a sponsor?
  
  During the project, you are expected to commit the resources needed to ensure the project’s success, including personnel, documents, specifications, etc.

  Specific responsibilities include:

  • Prepare an initial project description summary.
  • Provide any hardware and software not currently available at the RIT facilities, including software licenses or remote access so that the team can perform all project work from the RIT facilities. Hardware and software can be a permanent donation to the Department of Software Engineering or loaned only for the project duration.
  • Ensure the accessibility of personnel throughout the project to help the team understand both the domain and the problem being addressed - such accessibility is particularly critical during the initial phases and will require that the sponsor's personnel participate in meetings at RIT, or remotely with the student team.
  • Participate in team, product, and process presentation reviews.
  • Provide information the faculty can use to assess the success of the project.
  • Assess the completed project, document your assessment, and submit it to the Department of Software Engineering.
• What are the minimum deliverables required by the software engineering program?
  
  • Project website holding all work products and project artifacts maintained on the se.rit.edu web server
  • Project plan, schedule and process methodology definition prepared by the end of week 3 of the first term.
  • Tracking report for team time/effort and at least two product/process metrics appropriate to the project and development methodology. Tracking reports updated on the project website at least every two weeks.
  • Interim status and final project presentations
  • Project poster and presentation
  • Project technical report
  • Interim and final team self-assessment
  • Curriculum reflection report
• How do I propose a Senior Project?
  
  You will need to complete a Senior Project Proposal to provide a description of your project. This is a short 3 to 4 page document that briefly outlines the nature and scope of the project.

  The department faculty will then work with you to edit the proposal for appropriateness, clarity, and scope.
  Proposals that pass this review are publicized to the seniors who then specify their individual project preferences.

  If you have any questions during any stage of the process, feel free to contact Dr. Jim Vallino, J.Vallino@se.rit.edu.

• How are intellectual property and proprietary information handled?
  
  RIT's Intellectual Property policies give students ownership of everything they create as part of their coursework. For senior project, students will assign their intellectual property rights to the project sponsor, if this is required. Students who do not want to give up these rights will be given projects where assignment is not required.

  Senior project is the culminating activity for the students' software engineering program. All project work is assumed to be non-proprietary so that students can freely talk about their work to prospective employers or graduate programs. If a project requires the sponsor to divulge proprietary information this must be specifically identified as confidential. We require that no more than 25% of the project scope be considered confidential.

  Students will sign one of two standard course project agreements. The Student Course Project Intellectual Property and Non-Disclosure Agreement is intended primarily for commercial project sponsors, and the Student Course Project Limited Use and Non-Disclosure Agreement is intended for non-commercial sponsors. The faculty coach for a project will sign a standard Faculty Course Project Non-Disclosure Agreement. If these standard agreements are not acceptable to you, or your legal counsel, we will not be able to assign a team to your project.

• Can I propose a project which requires multi-disciplinary skills?
  
  We work closely with the multi-disciplinary senior design projects in the Kate Gleason College of Engineering. This allows us to accept projects that may need mechanical, electrical, or computer engineering participation. Depending on the nature of the project, and the relative size of the software component, the project may run in software engineering or in KGCOE's multi-disciplinary senior design program. In either case, an appropriate set of students from multiple disciplines will be assigned to work on the project.

  If your project might require graphic design, or participation from the College of Business, we can work with other colleges at RIT to create a student team for your project.

• When should I submit a proposal?
  
  Please submit your proposal early. This will give us time to work with you to modify the scope of the project as necessary.

  For Winter/Spring projects (December-May), proposals are accepted throughout the summer (deadline August 31st). We also offer a smaller section of Senior Project in Summer/Fall (June-November).

• How are students assigned to projects?
  
  Each student registered for Senior Project ranks up to three preferred projects, and indicates one student he or she would like on their team. The faculty form teams and assign the projects. We have typically received more proposals than we have senior teams, so some project proposals will not be assigned to a team.
• What organizations have sponsored a Senior Projects in the past?
  
  • Alstom Signaling, Inc. Transit Systems - North America
  • Eastman Kodak
  • EDS
  • Harris Corporation, RF Communications Division
  • IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center
  • JPMorgan
  • National Soaring Museum
  • PAETEC Communications
  • RIT Office of Cooperative Education and Career Services
  • Society for Total Emergency Programs (STEP) Council of the Genesee Region
  • University of Rochester
  • US Air Force Research Laboratory Information Directorate
• Can I see examples of past projects?
  

  Browse Past and Present Senior Projects:

  
  Select a Year
  2012
  201120102009 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001

• I have other questions or want to submit a proposal. Who should I contact?
  
  Dr. Jim Vallino coordinates the software engineering senior projects. Contact him at J.Vallino@se.rit.edu.