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NOTE: PROJECT PROPOSALS SHOULD BE SUBMITTED ON OR BEFORE NOVEMBER 23.
Senior Projects is a capstone course for Computer Science majors. Students begin work in the course at the end of November and continue through the spring semester. Requests for project proposals are usually sent to potential sponsors during the summer for projects beginning late in the fall. Contact Judith Stafford to be placed on the distribution list for the annual request for proposals.
The Computer Science Department at Tufts University is offering the Senior Software Engineering Project class, COMP190, in the spring semester. This course is intended to give senior Computer Science majors experience in real-world software development prior to graduation. For a description of the course see the project course overview.
To accomplish this goal, I am soliciting software development project proposals from university faculty, industry, research institutions, and government agencies. Students will work in teams of five from the end of November through early May on the specification, prototyping, design, implementation, testing and documentation of the software. Not only does this class provide valuable experience for the students and useful software for the sponsors, it also provides an ideal way for sponsors and students to become familiar with one another.
I hope to include projects from a wide variety of sponsoring organizations, from very large to very small, as well as government, research, and non-profit organizations. Students in the Department of Computer Science at Tufts University have a wide variety of secondary interests so it is my hope that the projects will be from a variety of problem domains, including imaging, artificial intelligence, business, medicine, networking, science, entertainment, publishing, communications, aviation, and education.
Two factors need to be considered when proposing projects. First, each student is expected to spend about 12 hours per week on the project on average. Second, the course encompasses much more than just programming; the students are expected to develop their writing skills (via written development specifications and user documentation) and to develop their speaking skills (via various oral presentations in class and at the sponsor site). Therefore, the projects should be of "small” to “medium" scope and size. As a very general guideline, a project that could be done by a single "moderately experienced" person working full time in a similar time frame is probably of an appropriate size.
Potential sponsors may submit one or more projects for student consideration. Sponsors may also place any necessary restrictions on the selection of their projects, such as limiting the total number of projects that may be chosen, for instance you may not want to sponsor more than one project in the class. A goal is to give the students as much choice as possible in the selection of projects.
Sponsors may require students to sign non-disclosure agreements; however, such agreements must allow the University faculty and staff responsible for evaluating the students, adequate access to the software to perform that evaluation. The University and the students have no claim on the software produced in these projects, but students should be allowed to use documents and code listings as part of their portfolio when interviewing for jobs.
I invite you to participate in this program. To do so, please submit the following information for each project proposal:
Return each proposal to Judith Stafford. I will then be in contact with the technical liaison for any further discussion of the project. To be considered for the coming semester, project proposals should be received by me no later than November 23.
If you have any further questions about the program please contact me. If you are unable to participate at this time, please forward this request to anyone in your organization who may be interested.
Sincerely,
Judith Stafford
Tufts University