A research experience opens students to a kind of problem solving they can't experience in the classroom, Lord said. The very essence of engineering is creativity. That's tremendously creative. Such on-campus research centers provide students with tremendous opportunities to work on industrially relevant research, said Thompson. At CNDE, we're developing generic technologies for companies and applying those capabilities to specific problems of particular companies.
Some aspects require rapid turnaround and are best done by researchers.
Other longer range things are better accomplished by a graduate student and will result in a graduate thesis. The student works on a real problem, but can move at a pace appropriate to learning needs. The results are sometimes spectacular in unexpected ways. He started MechDyne a couple of years ago and has hired several of our grads. They're building innovative virtual reality environments all over the world from Marshalltown, Iowa.