It takes enterprise to succeed in business or industry.
The Enterprise Program at Michigan Technological University is giving students the knowledge, skills and real-world experience to do just that.
The Michigan Tech program pairs teams of students with industry sponsors. The students work to address an actual challenge or need that their sponsor is facing. They invent products and pioneer solutions.
It’s Michigan Tech's answer to private industry's need for graduates who have technical competence and understand the practical application of skills and knowledge acquired in their university classes. In the Enterprise program, students learn teamwork, project management and leadership, while industry gets to interact with tomorrow's engineers and leaders.
Through the program, industry and academia are partnering to deliver an unusual educational experience that prepares students for successful careers, while solving some of industries’ most challenging problems.
“The student team’s interactions with the sponsor closely approximate what they will experience in the workplace,” says Glen Archer, faculty advisor to the Blue Marble Security Enterprise. “In addition to the technical challenges, the students have a chance to put into practice the ‘soft skills’ that make the difference between most new hires and experienced workers."
Blue Marble Security is one of 26 teams in the Enterprise program. The company works in variety of technological specialties, including security, the environment and industrial process control. Among the other teams are Advanced Motor Sports, IT Oxygen, Aerospace Enterprise, Multiplanetary Innovation, Alternative Energy and Consumer Product Manufacturing.
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Michigan Technological UniversityAdvanced Motorsports student analyzes data on computer.Nagesh Hatti, a professor of practice in Michigan Tech’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, is director of the Enterprise program. He calls Enterprise a one-of-a-kind initiative.
"Most engineering schools have students working only in their discipline,” he explains. Enterprise teams include students from a variety of majors working together, sharing their areas of expertise as they approach a problem.
Close to 1,000 students from 42 majors participate in the program, which is marking its 25th year. The program also spans multiple years of a student’s education. Freshmen, sophomores, juniors and seniors all work together on teams.
The students learn to manage resources, make budgets, meet deadlines, and handle clients’ expectations and requirements, Hatti explains. They also learn what he calls “soft skills,” such as communication, teamwork and leadership. “This is their first job before their first job,” he says.
Archer calls his work with Enterprise program the most satisfying part of his job.
"Like our corporate sponsors, I have the ability to establish a persistent relationship with my students,” he says. “They have gone on to become leaders in graduate school, industry, the military and academia. It is a tremendous source of joy to watch them grow as engineers and managers and take their place in the world.”
Enterprise program alumni go on to get good jobs in business and industry. They credit their Enterprise experience. Alice Roache is one of them.
Roache earned a civil engineering degree at Michigan Tech. She credits her experience with
Velovations Enterprise with teaching her about teamwork.
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Michigan Technological University Auris signal trace. The Aerospace Enterprise team developed Auris, a small, low-cost satellite built by Michigan Tech that monitors radio frequency emissions from space."It got me into a room with a whole group of people I wouldn’t have otherwise had the opportunity to network with or to meet,” she explains. “I have a huge appreciation for the teamwork that grew out of those project teams, and the importance of giving voice to everyone on the team. There were many instances where the best ideas of the day didn’t come from the most senior team member or the person with the best grades.”
Roache now works as a project structural engineer at OHM Advisors in Hancock. She often represents her company at Michigan Tech’s career fairs.
"Asking students about their Enterprise projects is one of my favorite interview questions," she says. "Hearing the students get excited about the projects and teams they have had the opportunity to work on tells me way more about them than a GPA.”
An Enterprise success story
The
Consumer Product Manufacturing Enterprise project focused on promoting sustainability on campus. The team partnered with campus housing to give all first-year Huskies in 2023’s incoming class a Michigan Tech OneTumbler, a BPA-free, double-insulated drink container using in-mold label technology.
Sussex IM, a custom injection molding company based in Sussex, Wisconsin, sponsored the team, working with the students to personalize Michigan Tech designs for the company’s reusable beverage container.
Most of the reusable beverage containers were handed out during move-in weekend in 2023, as part of welcome packages given to incoming Huskies. Remaining OneTumblers were given to the senior chemical engineering class and other students on campus.
Then chemical engineering students conducted a life cycle assessment comparing the carbon dioxide emissions produced in the manufacture and transportation of single-use and reusable containers. Their research won publication by the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE).
“It was a good experience for everyone on the team to work with a company out in the real world,” said chemical engineering major Jacqui Foreman.
"Because it is a smaller, family-owned company, the students were able to work directly with the CEO, CTO and marketing team. That is not an experience you get every day,” she pointed out.
Benefitting industry
Enterprise clearly offers students many benefits: an opportunity to work on real problems with real companies in an environment that is more like the real world than a classroom. But what about their industry sponsors? How does the Enterprise program benefit them?
One of the Enterprise sponsors is Koppers Inc., a company that creates chemicals essential to the preservation of key infrastructure materials such as crossties and utility poles.
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Michigan Technological UniversityBuilt World Enterprise students competing in the Timber Strong competition."Koppers gets project work done by a group of very talented students,” said Brian Miller, a process development engineer at the company. “It’s a way that Koppers can help develop the next generation of technical professionals — possibly future employees.
“The students get to work on a real-world project that has immense value to the plant to increase accuracy, reduce repetitive work and ultimately make the process more efficient,” Miller explained. “They get experience planning and executing project tasks, making decisions to keep a project focused, evaluating the factors that affect project economics and presenting results to Koppers management. And they may get some pizza and a sweatshirt or two along the way.”
Koppers is working with the Consumer Product Manufacturing Enterprise team. The students interface with two chemical engineers and a chemist at the company’s Hubbell facility.
“They worked to develop in-process or near-process automated analyzers for key chemical species in our process solutions,” Miller said. “Drop-in sensors are not currently available for these species at the concentrations we use them.”
Enterprise gives creative students a chance to think outside the box. As the sensor project was getting closer to its build phase, Miller recalled, the team set up a prototyping test in their lab space to begin testing flow calculations with actual equipment.
“We at Koppers were not aware they had decided to do this, and they surprised us at an update meeting with video of their set-up,” he said. “Very proactive and cool."
Miller said Koppers gets involved with programs like Enterprise “because they provide students with real-world experience while accomplishing valuable goals for the company. That’s a win-win.”
Michigan Tech’s Enterprise program seems to be a win-win all around — for industry in the U.P. and its future leaders.
Jennifer Donovan is a reporter with more than 40 years of experience on daily newspapers, magazines and university writing and editing. She is retired as director of news and media relations at Michigan Technological University and lives in Houghton.