Faculty Professional Practice Council (FPPC) – this action council would have oversight for establishing then maintaining continuing improvement of the exemplar curricular professional practice program featuring student-centered team-based problem solving and project learning each year throughout the undergraduate experience. Included would be a design spine with at least one signature team-based design project each of the four years, including industry sponsored third year (one semester) and fourth-year (full-year) best practice senior design projects. Design thinking and entrepreneurial/intrapreneurial mindset would be integrated throughout the undergraduate experience. During AY 2025-26, the best practice sponsored senior design (capstone) program would be implemented featuring real problems that would be solved by small student teams of 4-5 students for at least ten, up to 15 sponsor/customer SCPs. Best practice SCP sponsored one-semester third-year design projects would be introduced in spring semester 2025 during the development phase of the initiative, with sponsored second-year projects being introduced spring semester 2026 and at three partner community colleges. Various presentations and reports would be embedded with each project to help assure that each student acquires the oral and written communication, and teaming skills required in the professional workplace upon graduation.
The FPPC would be established during the start-up phase, ideally prior to mid-June 2024. Depending on offerings by the university, students participating in the pilot would be majoring in one of the following majors: BME, CpE, CS, EE, or ME. Department chairs representing each major, would select a lead for the faculty team and two additional faculty members to represent the major. One would lead program development for first and second-year design projects and the other would lead program development for third and fourth-year sponsored projects including a best practice capstone program. Project sponsors would plan on using results produced by their student team and would get the IP. Student names would be on any resulting patent. The FPPC has a lead point of contact for communication and participation to and from PPEC, SPPC, SDSC and each of the SCPs