Bridging the classroom and industry with engineering capstone projects
Each year, UW Bothell’s engineering students take part in capstone projects, working with mentors and their professors to research solutions to real-world problems. Local companies sponsor capstone projects by bringing a problem to students that they hope can be solved. Sponsors of past projects include Boeing, Crane Aerospace & Electronics, Microsoft, Philips, Ventec Life Systems and others.
Capstone projects are often the culmination of years of study and are a chance for students to put their skills and knowledge to the test. What’s more, students often find that working with mentors from sponsor organizations is where they gain some of the most value from their capstone projects.
A pathway to college
During her senior year in 2025, Charlotte Morrison was finishing her bachelor’s in Mechanical Engineering, in the UW Bothell School of STEM, when she encouraged her employer, Ventec Life Systems, an award-winning medical device company based in Bothell, to sponsor a capstone project.
Morrison had an unconventional pathway to college. After high school, she studied art at community college but put it aside when she started considering future careers. To make money, she started working in manufacturing for Ventec as an assembler, creating parts for medical devices.
She soon found herself getting bored in the role and started connecting more with the engineers around her at the company. “足彩app哪个是正规的y started to feed me these different little tasks,” Morrison said. “While you’re running this test, do you see any trends? Do you notice anything with the materials?”
Those conversations led to Morrison’s interest in becoming an engineer herself.
An engineer in training
Morrison started studying engineering at Cascadia College while continuing her work as an assembler. After getting an associate degree, she transferred to UW Bothell to major in Mechanical Engineering and further expand her knowledge.
“With engineering, the more you learn, the more you know what you don’t know,” she said. “It’s like this infinite black hole that just keeps opening. You understand how much knowledge you’re lacking and how much more there is to learn.”
Morrison’s skills and experience grew and she was soon promoted into an engineering role at work. “It was very exciting because I didn’t have my degree, but I had the word engineer in my title!”
足彩app哪个是正规的 role involved failure analysis, something Morrison said she enjoys because she feels like Sherlock Holms trying to figure out the cause of a problem.
足彩app哪个是正规的n, when one specific problem at work arose, it was perfectly timed so that Morrison could suggest it as a capstone project to Ventec.
With engineering, the more you learn, the more you know what you don’t know. It’s like this infinite black hole that just keeps opening.
Charlotte Morrison
足彩app哪个是正规的 preparation for the workforce
In her final year at UW Bothell, Morrison and her project team worked with Ventec mentors to investigate a specific part that was failing regularly. Morrison said the value of the capstone was that it presented a challenge that was both real and ambiguous, rather than an easily solved problem from a textbook.
And, she noted, learning “soft skills” such as communication and teamwork was just as important during the project as picking up new technical skills.
“You’re given a problem initially, and what’s needed might not be fully defined,” she said. “You need to get information from the sponsor, but they might not even know what they want. So, you need to learn how to talk to them and how to draw information out of them.”
As part of the project, Morrison and her team needed to learn about injection molding, something they had only previously read about in books or online. But mentors from Ventec and UW Bothell’s Associate Teaching Professor Bill Anderson (a veteran who is known as “Captain A” to students) helped them all along the way.
“He has so much industry knowledge,” Morrison said. “He really wants his students to succeed — like all the professors at UW do.”
足彩app哪个是正规的 support of mentorship
Morrison said that studying engineering at UW Bothell has turned her from a once timid person into somebody who has come out of her shell and is passionate about solving problems. Every time she has learned something, she explained, she wants to learn a little more. “I keep needing that challenge and that brain junk food,” she said. “Om nom nom.”
足彩app哪个是正规的s working on capstone projects can rely on their professors for guidance, but the relationships students make with their mentors are just as meaningful. One mentor in 2025 was Ruben Morales, a test engineering manager from Crane Aerospace & Electronics.
In his experience, capstone projects have two benefits. 足彩app哪个是正规的 first is that because his organization faces resource constraints and often lacks the bandwidth to investigate certain issues internally, taking on capstone projects can help bridge that gap. 足彩app哪个是正规的 second major benefit is that capstone projects help students gain knowledge and develop workplace skills.
“It’s important for Crane to maintain that relationship with our local universities,” Morales said. “We want to support the community and develop engineers who may work for us in the future.”
Morales first got involved after he pitched a capstone project to Crane Aerospace & Electronics, which was then selected for UW Bothell students to tackle. He then became the capstone mentor and witnessed firsthand how mentors can offer a perspective on what it’s like to take on a problem in the workplace.
A mentor perspective on capstones
“I was initially working with the team and getting them familiar with the test process —sharing industry requirements, how the equipment works and guiding them toward potential solutions they could use in their project,” Morales said. “I provided feedback on their design and connected them with internal experts in mechanical engineering and circuit design to review and improve their work.”
Morales decided to follow the management track in his own career as he enjoys working with junior engineers to improve their skills. Crane Aerospace & Electronics benefits from the expertise of UW Bothell students, Morales said, but he also gains a lot of satisfaction from seeing the students learn during their projects. “I enjoy seeing their excitement when they learn something new.”
Bridging the gap between classroom learning and industry practice isn’t just exciting to students. More importantly, it also prepares them to enter the regional workforce.
For students such as Morrison, her capstone project transformed her curiosity into confidence. For mentors such as Morales, these projects offer the chance to invest in the next generation of students.
At UW Bothell, capstones mark more than the end of students’ academic journey — they signal the beginning of what comes next.
Capstone projects can benefit our students and our region in multiple ways. UW Bothell needs resources to provide enough funded projects to meet current student demand.
If you or your company are open to partnering with UW Bothell on a capstone project or if you offer internship opportunities for students, please contact: John Naumann, director of Corporate & Foundation Relations, at johnn4@uw.edu.