Your next engineer — met, vetted, and proven before you make an offer.
Sponsor a capstone instead. A multidisciplinary senior team designs, builds, and delivers over an academic year — and you meet your next hire before you ever post the job.
Start with the plain-English case: what it is, what it costs, and why it beats an internship or a cold hire. No commitment.
Start here → Already in the networkSkip the intro. Go straight to submitting a project or your university's capabilities, plus the logistics and IP terms.
Go to members →1. EDGE Capstone Partnership Program financial model — cost per capable, retained hire this round vs. traditional recruiting (SHRM, NACE, Work Institute, Leadership IQ benchmarks). 2. Versus the all-in cost of one 3-month engineering intern (NACE / SHRM 2025-26). 3. Program cost-share: $5,000 sponsor + $10,000 matching grant this round. 4. Program terms — IP assigned to the sponsor.
A capstone is a six-month, faculty-supervised look at a whole team before anyone signs an offer.
A full two-term project — not a résumé and a 45-minute interview.
Higher than hires with no prior connection to the company. †NACE.
A whole multidisciplinary team, working your problem across the year.
A team measured the carbon and waste footprint of alternative NICU care models — later published in a peer-reviewed journal.
A NASA-competition finalist team designed a redundant flywheel for energy storage on the Moon.
For a semiconductor sponsor, a team designed and tested a gallium-nitride device and half-bridge circuit on a test chip.
"Support for academic capstone programs is an excellent avenue for us to engage students, reduce recruitment costs, and accelerate onboarding — building a pipeline of skilled talent aligned with the semiconductor industry's needs."
"The EDGE Capstone Program integrates authentic manufacturing challenges into undergraduate capstone courses across our member schools — connecting industry directly to the next generation of engineers."
"Six months on a real microelectronics project gave me exactly what employers wanted to see. I had an offer before graduation."
We'll send the single-page sponsor brief — the numbers, the timeline, and what a project looks like. That's the whole promise: one email, one brief, no follow-up you didn't ask for.
Two independent surveys, about ten minutes each. Fill yours in whenever you're ready.
Put a real problem in front of a dedicated senior team with faculty backing and lab access.
Report your programs, labs, faculty focus, and capacity, and get matched to well-scoped projects.