For recent university graduates with degrees in computer science, the obstacle is finding a company that provides the best opportunities. Both of these challenges are being met through a university-industry partnership at North Carolina State University called ePartners. Launched last August, ePartners is a program of the College of Engineering s Department of Computer Science. It gives industrial partners recruiting assistance, access to research and opportunities to participate in student projects.
Students also benefit from equipment improvements in the department funded by the companies.
Ten companies have joined the ePartner program so far. Contributions are based on the company s number of employees. A firm participating at the highest level, referred to as a Super ePartner, gets to participate in two senior design course projects in which it presents real-world problems to student teams, which then set out to find solutions. One of this semester s senior design course challenges comes from John Deere. Students involved with the project are working with a team from John Deere to develop a graphical toolkit for sales and marketing performance decision support.