Inviting North Bay High-Tech Industries to Partner with Electrical Engineering Program at SSU

One of the key features of our successful electrical engineering program at SSU is its strong two-way connection between the Department of Engineering Science and the local industry and potential employers of the program’s graduates. SSU invites you to join us in educating our electrical engineering students by becoming a sponsor. The department welcomes sponsorship ranging from cash awards and projects funding to equipment donations and student mentorship. A few examples are:

1. Senior Design Project

   The senior design project course is the cornerstone of our EE program at SSU. This is a two-semester design and construction course (EE 492-493), which starts in the Fall semester of the students’ final year and completed at the end of the Spring semester. The main thrust of the senior design projects is hardware and software prototyping, development, testing, and product validation. Industry advisors and sponsors are highly sought for proposing and supporting senior design projects. In addition to advising and mentorship, sponsors are encouraged to provide students with the necessary components, materials and instruments for a successful completion of their projects. See the article titled "Generating Start-up Relevance in Capstone Projects" to learn more about our overall philosophy in implementing the senior design project. Visit Senior Design Projects to learn more about our previous projects.

   As a senior deign project sponsor, you can provide the materials and an unrestricted donation to cover any student team's expenses to produce a functional prototype of their design solution. The requirements are specified and budgets are finalized with the student team before the prototypes are built. You can also mentor a project and provide technical support to students.

2. Mentorship

   We seek industry engineers, individually or in a group, to provide mentorship to our students. The depth and extent of the mentorship could range from monitoring the progress of a selected group of students throughout the course of their studies or during a limited time, to sharing their experiences with students and helping them with their technical projects. Interested individuals can also consider offering career guidance and advice to our sophomore through senior EE students; this can be conducted through face-to-face meeting or via phone.

3. Student Internship

   There are many excellent internship opportunities are made available by the San Francisco North Bay high-tech companies. We invite our local industries to seriously consider our electrical engineering students for these opportunities. The internship experience could be during summer or for longer duration. The internship experience is a valuable and complementary component of the standard academic education. As a testimony to the high quality of our EE graduates, many student internships have been followed by offers of full-time employment.

4. Industry Instructors

   We regularly invite industry experts to teach undergraduate and graduate courses and workshops. In addition to providing the department with a pool of expert instructors, our industry adjunct faculties have proved to be an important conduit for communicating the needs of one side to the other and have always demonstrated a high degree of teaching effectiveness and are extremely well-liked by our students.

5. Continuing Education Opportunities

   Members of the technical staff of the local industry with AA degrees will have the opportunity to obtain their B.S. degree in electrical engineering at SSU. Similarly, those with B.S. degrees will be able to pursue a master degree in Computer and Engineering Science (CES). The ES department invites applications from the employees of our local industries for enrollment in our undergraduate and graduate engineering programs.

6. Engineering Lecture Series

   The department regularly invites the engineering and technical professionals in our community to share their state-of-the art experiences with our faculty and students by presenting their work at our lecture series. Many beneficial contacts occur between the presenters and engineering students and faculty during the social period following the lectures. For a list of past and present lectures visit Lectures & Workshops.

7. Industry Shadow Day

   We invite all industry experts and professionals to consider arranging a shadow day for our freshmen engineering students. During the shadow day our engineering students will have the opportunity to work with an engineer in a local industry for a day to learn what really goes on in the job world.

8. Cash and Equipment Donations

   In order to educate and train our EE students at the highest level possible, the department needs a steady influx of the financial assistance and latest equipment used in the field and welcomes donation of equipment to the department's specialized laboratories. For more information about Department's current test and measurement equipment and software application needs please contact the Department Chair.