The Corporate Sponsored Senior Projects Program (CSSPP) at Baskin Engineering, UC Santa Cruz provides an opportunity for companies to get interesting, high-value projects done inexpensively, and to get to know and potentially make job offers to teams of three to five graduating seniors.  In this program, engineering students gain real-world, industry-level skills while delivering effective solutions for corporate sponsors.  The student teams work on projects, defined by partner companies, for two quarters to fulfill their graduation requirements.  CSSPP fosters deep and valuable relationships with the Silicon Valley business community through student, faculty and corporate engagement, and students gain meaningful interdisciplinary team-based learning.  Cost varies depending on company size, and corporate sponsors can receive intellectual property rights to the project results.

ChargePoint, a leader in the electrical vehicle (EV) charging industry, sponsored two projects in 2022-2023. With over 18,000 charging stations globally, ChargePoint is consistently developing and enhancing their electrical vehicle charging technology to keep up with customer demand.  Adam Glueck, ChargePoint test engineer, said of the students, “They brought great energy and enthusiasm for learning and exploring the interdisciplinary side of the project, collaborating with mechanical, electrical, and software engineers. I felt like we were able to collaborate, communicate, and bring a new idea from concept phase to a polished and integrated execution with an aggressive timeline.”  At the end of the program, Chargepoint offered three CSSPP students full-time paid internships over the summer.  Read more about Chargepoint’s experience here.

Keysight Technologies, a test and measurement company founded in 2014 as a spin-out from Agilent Technologies, has been a partner of the Corporate Sponsored Senior Projects Program for three consecutive years, with plans to join again in the 2023-2024 academic year. They have offered full-time employment to several CSSPP students over the course of their engagement with the program.  “This program is a mutually beneficial engagement where we help students out by giving them interesting projects to work on, which can be applied to industry and potentially a role with us, and they help us by working on projects that will be deployed as real products for Keysight,” said Brennen Direnzo, current Keysight automation product manager and CSSPP industry project lead. Read more about Keysight’s experience here, and in their blog post here.

To learn more about participating in the program in 2023-2024, please reach out to bsoedev@ucsc.edu.  You can view past projects and sponsors here.