Frequently Asked Questions

Central Software Engineering Studio is a framework allowing an external or internal entity to sponsor a project completed by our undergraduate students in the BS Computer Science Honors program or graduate students in the MS Software Engineering program. Small teams of students are assigned to solve challenging, real-world software issues for companies and organizations. External corporate and non-profit sponsors submit proposals for projects that teams of 4 or 5 students will work on. Over the course of one or two 15-week semesters, each team works with you, as the project sponsor, applying computer science and software engineering skills that the students learned in their studies. They carry the project from inception through an entire software development lifecycle. The typical end result is a prototype of or a functional software tool ready for use by your organization.

• You can help prepare the next generation of software engineers who may become your employees;
• Your company can benefit from the work done by the team to clarify your problem, design a solution, and build a working system/prototype;
• Enjoy working with a team of aspiring software engineers who are excited to meet real-world challenges.

Teams generally consist of 4-5 senior undergraduate or graduate students. Students work on the project for one or two 15-week semesters. During this time, each team member is expected to devote an average of 10 hours/week on the project. Project scope should be determined with this level of effort in mind. It is also important to keep in mind that it is unlikely that students will have detailed knowledge of the sponsor's domain. Time for acquiring this knowledge must be factored into the project’s scope.

We are interested in projects from any application domain, and of any type including web-based systems and desktop applications. A typical project should require the team to demonstrate their computer science and software engineering skills including requirements elicitation, design and implementation, and deployment.

If you are interested in proposing a project suitable for a single student, please consider hiring a student as an intern for your company. More information about Computer Science internships.

The project sponsor works with the student team and their faculty coach.

The students are responsible for the completion of the project. The faculty coach acts primarily as guide and mentor. The faculty coach will not actively manage the project, nor will he or she assume any technical role other than general consultant.

In a typical project, students will demonstrate their skills in requirements elicitation and analysis, architecture and design, implementation, testing, and delivery over the course of one or two terms. The specific software process each team uses is part of the negotiation between the sponsor and team, under the guidance of the team’s faculty coach.

During the project, you are expected to commit the resources needed to ensure the project’s success, including personnel, documents, specifications, etc.

Specific responsibilities include:

• Prepare an initial project description summary.
• Provide any hardware and software not currently available at Central facilities, including software licenses or remote access so that the team can perform all project work from Central facilities.
• Ensure the accessibility of personnel throughout the entire length of the project to help the team understand both the domain and the problem being addressed. This is particularly critical during the initial phases of the project and will require that the sponsor's personnel participate in meetings at Central, at the company site, or remotely with the student team.
• Participate in team, product, and process presentations and reviews.
• Provide information the faculty can use to assess the success of the project.
• Assess the completed project, document your assessment, and submit it to Central Computer Science Department.

When writing your proposal, you should make sure to specify the project-specific intermediate or final deliverables you would like to get from the team. These might include: implementation code you want delivered in increments or at the end of the project; documents, such as requirements, design, user manual, or installation instructions; additional presentations or training sessions; product deployment; or any other deliverables you believe are necessary for a successful project, and for you to use the system that the team develops.

You will need to complete a Project Proposal to provide a description of your project. Proposals are typically a 4 to 6 page document that briefly outlines the nature and scope of the project. The Project Proposal document includes guidelines to assist you in the process of writing your proposal. The Software Engineering Studio Coordinator will work with you to edit the proposal for appropriateness, clarity, and scope. If you have any questions during any stage of the process, feel free to contact the Software Engineering Studio Coordinator, Dr. Stan Kurkovsky at kurkovsky@ccsu.edu.

Please submit your proposal early. This will give us time to work with you to modify the scope of the project as necessary. Ideally, we would like to receive a proposal at least two months before the start of each project term, which are aligned with regular semesters. At Central, Fall semesters start during the last week of August, and Spring semesters start in mid-January. Please direct any questions to the Software Engineering Studio Coordinator, Dr. Stan Kurkovsky at kurkovsky@ccsu.edu

• Aetna
• The Hartford
• Stanley-Whitman House museum
• CTfastrak
• EDSN Foundation
• Tipevo
• Central Department of History
• Central Department of Psychology

Yes. They are available here

Dr. Stan Kurkovsky coordinates the Software Engineering Studio. You can contact him at kurkovsky@ccsu.edu