© American Society for Engineering Education, 2007 REWARDS AND CHALLENGES OF UTILIZING UNIVERSITY RESEARCH/ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT CENTERS FOR ENHANCING ENGINEERING EDUCATION

Most professional disciplines have an integrated residency period for their students before they graduate. This is certainly true for medical and law schools. In engineering, however, this practice has not been formalized. Some schools accomplish this task by their co-operative engineering education programs. In some other schools, students gain experience in summer internships. However, in most universities these programs are optional and, where conducted, take place with minimum contribution from the university professors and professionals. At the same time, due to expectations from universities to play a more direct role in the regional economic development many universities have established research, technology transfer and technology commercialization centers to serve this purpose. These centers partner with the federal government and local private industries to assist the regional industries to develop new products and processes for the partner industries to implement. The ultimate hope is to bring along the technological innovation to the region and create additional jobs and economic development for the region. Having these centers owned and controlled by the university, like teaching hospitals that ar