There are a number of benefits to participating in the computer science capstone course as a project sponsor.  First and most important, by getting directly involved with the GVSU School of Computing and Information Systems, you help us better understand your organization’s needs with regard to the skills you look for in CS graduates.  This helps our faculty proactively refine and improve our overall CS curriculum and keep it relevant to the rapid changes that are taking place in the software industry.   A second benefit to your organization is the opportunity to “try out” soon-to-graduate computer science majors before making a longer-term commitment to hire them as employees.  Even if a company doesn’t eventually hire one or more students from an assigned capstone team, it gives companies an opportunity to evaluate first-hand the level of competence students who graduate from our programs typically achieve.  In addition, at the present time, given the heavy demand for computing skills, many of our computer science majors receive multiple job offers upon graduating.  The organizations who participate regular in our senior project course develop more mindshare among our students, and tend to have more success recruiting our students.   Finally, sponsoring a project is a good way to get that “pet” software project or rapid prototype you’ve been eagerly pushing for, but haven’t had the time or budget to make it happen.  In most cases in addition to the project fee, the only cost the sponsor company incurs is the time the company representative spends writing the original project description and meeting with students over the course of the semester.