To submit a project for student collaboration, complete our simple Expression of Interest form.
Collaborating with our Students
Introduction
Working with students can provide companies with a range of benefits whilst simultaneously helping to facilitate worthwhile learning experiences for the next generation of engineering professionals. External organisations have various options to work with students from the Engineering Department and these pages provide information on aspects of how these projects work.
Students undertaking an engineering degree at Lancaster have a range of technical knowledge, skills and behaviours, which can help contribute to your organisation’s objectives. Often-cited benefits by our collaborators include:
- Progressing research and development activities, including new product development
- Harnessing young minds that are not necessarily constrained by convention
- Solving problems that require technical, engineered solutions
- Can be used as an extended interview for those employers considering graduate recruitment
- Trying out new concepts or designs which may have validity but due to day-to-day business pressures, internal resourcing these projects is not necessarily viable (“bottom drawer” projects)
- Satisfaction of knowing your input and engagement with our students is helping to inspire and develop the next generation of engineers
In-curricula projects with external organisations afford students many benefits too:
- Apply the knowledge gained from their studies and elsewhere
- Work on a project that is in the “real world” and not a theoretical exercise
- Develop transferable skills such as teamwork, communication and problem-solving
- Able to talk about the experiences at interview
- Learn more about a sector that may interest them
- Establishing and extending professional networks
We aim to create a 'win-win' situation so that all stakeholders are able to benefit from this collaboration.
These endeavours are an important part of our students’ programmes, their success is contingent on a commitment from any external organisation to contribute to this. The most successful collaborations are where external organisations support, guide and direct students throughout the project. If you are unable to make such a commitment at this time, please wait until you are able to do so.
Whilst we have every good faith in our students’ abilities, we are not able to guarantee the success of any project that includes members of our student body. As a Department, we help prepare and guide them but ultimately some student projects can fail to meet the expectations of our collaborators. Fortunately, this is relatively low. If a project you are considering is critical to your business needs, you may want to consider whether a student project is the best choice.
The students stuck to the brief and were excellent in communicating daily progress. They asked the right questions and delved into the topic with enthusiasm and interest. The sign-up process was quick and easy. Lancaster University's communication and that of the students were exceptional, with daily reports on progress and feedback.
Case Studies
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Appley Bridge Biomass to Energy Ltd
A team of Engineering students carried out a series of chemical engineering investigations for Appley Bridge Biomass to Energy Ltd to provide cost-effective options for treating effluent.
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Kong Adventure
Kong Adventure approached Lancaster University’s Engineering Department to help them develop the latest concept in climbing walls – illuminated routes.
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Museum in a Box
A team of engineering students worked with Museum in a Box Ltd to help develop a prototype of their novel learning aid, which helps museums engage and inspire children.
Opportunities
We have a range of project opportunities at undergraduate and postgraduate level. These vary in length, time, team-based or individual and disciplinary area. This page is intended to provide you with details on all of the available project-based opportunities. As part of submitting an expression of interest, you will be asked to select which opportunity best suits your needs.
Opportunities accordion Accordion
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Two-week team-based projects – March
Level: 7 (Fourth Year of an integrated Masters – MEng)
Number of student(s): Teams of typically four to six
Length: Two weeks
Cumulative indicative time: 300 hours
Takes place: First half of March
Discipline area(s): Mechanical, Chemical, Mechatronic, Electronic and Electrical, and Nuclear Engineering
Indicative deadline for submitting expression of interest: End of January.
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Two-week team-based projects – June
Level: 6 (Third Year of an integrated Masters – MEng)
Number of student(s): Teams of typically four to six
Length: Two weeks
Cumulative indicative time: 300 hours
Takes place: mid-June
Discipline area(s): Mechanical, Chemical, Mechatronic, Electronic and Electrical, and Nuclear Engineering
Indicative deadline for submitting expression of interest: early May
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Fourth year team-based project
Level: 7 (Fourth Year of an integrated Masters – MEng)
Number of student(s): Teams of typically four to six
Length: Nine months
Cumulative indicative time: 1500 hours
Takes place: October – June
Discipline area(s): Mechanical, Mechatronic, Electronic and Electrical, and Nuclear Engineering
Indicative deadline for submitting expression of interest: mid-May
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MSc engineering management team-based project
Level: 7 (Postgraduate MSc)
Number of student(s): Teams of around three to four
Length: Eight months
Cumulative indicative time: 2000 hours
Takes place: January to August
Discipline area(s): Engineering project management
Indicative deadline for submitting expression of interest: Mid-December
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MSc mechanical engineering individual project
Level: 7 (Postgraduate MSc)
Number of student(s): One
Length: Four months
Cumulative indicative time: 500 hours
Takes place: May to August
Discipline area(s): Mechanical engineering with project management
Indicative deadline for submitting expression of interest: End of March
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Third year individual project
Level: 6 (undergraduate as part of either a BEng or MEng)
Number of student(s): One
Length: Nine months
Cumulative indicative time: 400 hours
Takes place: October to June
Discipline area(s): Mechanical, Mechatronic, Electronic and Electrical, and Nuclear Engineering
Indicative deadline for submitting expression of interest: End of March (note long lead time)
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Internship
Level: Any
Number of student(s): Any
Length: Typically up to three months full-time
Cumulative indicative time: Typically up to 420 hours
Takes place: Full time over summer, or part time
Discipline area(s): Any
Indicative deadline for submitting expression of interest: Any
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Year-in-Industry
Level: 5/6 between any two years of study (many students opt for their penultimate year to be in-industry)
Number of student(s): Any
Length: 12 months
Cumulative indicative time: 1650hrs
Takes place: Summer onwards
Discipline area(s): Any
Indicative deadline for submitting expression of interest: The earlier the better, but can be up until the summer of the year you want to recruit
FAQs
Here is a list of the most commonly asked-questions we receive regarding Engineering student projects. If you have a question not listed, don’t hesitate to get in touch with Chris Lambert.
FAQs Accordion Accordion
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What about IP?
For in-curricular student projects, we discourage any which aim to create new IP. This is chiefly because the University does not automatically own student IP. Where a student generates IP as part of their academic programme (except for specific instances), the student will be the sole owners of their IP. We therefore encourage work that may be based on background IP owned by the external organisation or which includes information that is in the public domain. In reality, most short-term undergraduate student projects rarely get close to ever generating new IP. If you wish to work with us on a project that aims to create new IP, there are many other ways in which you can achieve this and we’d encourage you to get in touch to discuss which of these best meets your objectives.
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What about confidentiality?
As part of the preparation students undergo, they will all be told of the importance of confidentiality and that this remains paramount in collaborations with external partners due to the commercially sensitive nature of research and development projects. Students are explicitly told to not disclose information about their project beyond the project team. Many of our students are committed in the long-term to achieving professional recognition via chartership and hence have a good understanding of the UK SPEC as well as potentially being student members of the respective body.
All work submitted by students to the university will be retained for quality assurance purposes meaning this will be available to professional, statutory and regulatory bodies (PSRBs) such as accrediting organisations which at Lancaster currently comprises IMechE, IET and IChemE. External examiners may also be provided with copies of any work submitted by a student during their degree.
Members of the university are unable to sign non-disclosure agreements (NDA) from other organisations unless they are processed via our Contracts Office, which inevitably introduces negotiation and therefore delays. The university has a standard NDA which can be signed by members of academic departments. Please contact us if you want a standard Lancaster two-way NDA putting in place.
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What if I want to generate some publicity about this project?
We are happy to celebrate success! …if you feel the project has gone well and believe your organisation would benefit from promoting the results, then we are happy to work with you on the generation of social media content, case studies or press releases. Please note that in order to use the names, photographs and testimony of students, a consent form must be completed. This will be arranged by the Department but please do not make any announcements that include personal details without confirmation of this. We’re happy to be tagged in general posts on collaboration. Our social media channels are:
- https://www.facebook.com/LancasterPDU
- https://twitter.com/LancsUniLPDU
- https://www.instagram.com/lancsunilpdu/
We are open to co-authorship of research papers, where this appropriate. Please contact the academic supervisor if you would like to explore this.
We appreciate publicity is not for everyone and we will never release information about working with you publicly without your explicit prior consent and agreement to copy generated.
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How much does it cost?
We do not levy a financial contribution from our industry partners for students who undertake credit-bearing projects with external organisations. However, you are asked to fully commit your time to the project. Costs for any materials or parts that are required to successfully complete the project need to be met by the external organisation. We have no departmental budget for such items. Where it is clear such items will be needed, we encourage you to source these ahead of the start of the project.
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How are expressions of interest assessed?
This will depend on the nature of the opportunity but we typically convene a panel constituted of academic and professional staff who will decide on the projects that are selected for students. The decision-making process takes into account the likelihood of the project to be completed by the student(s) factoring-in requirements such as knowledge, facilities and skills. The panel will use the information supplied in your expression of interest so spending the time to complete this as fully as possible will help. The panel will also pay attention to the make-up of the cohort by discipline and aim to select projects that best reflect this constitution.
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How are students assigned?
This will depend on the opportunity but for most team-based in-curricula projects, students will have the option to indicate their preference. Students are normally invited to provide their preference in a decreasing order of priority up to a pre-determined number; we use this data to select the most enthusiastic students for the projects available.
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What if things go wrong?
We are not able to guarantee the outputs from student projects. We do everything we can to prepare students and equip them with the skills to complete the project but the success of the project is largely determined by their input. We place a high degree of emphasis on responsibility and relative autonomy on the students’ part. There are supervisors, technicians and convenors who will guide and support students. We recommend external organisation hold regular meetings where progress to achieving outputs are reviewed. This is the best way to prevent an unhappy outcome.
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How do I best support students?
See our section on guidance for further advice on supporting students.
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I keep hearing numbers like 445 and 540 – what do they mean?
Each module has an alpha-numeric mnemonic to easily identify it. Each department has a set of letters such as HIST for History and PHYS for Physics. All of those for Engineering begin with “ENGR” with the first number indicating the year of study (1, for first year, 2 for second etc). ENGR 445 is the undergraduate module for industry-based group projects and is a core module for all students on the integrated MEng programmes. ENGR 530 is the sister to this for our postgraduate taught students with ENGR 540 and ENGR 570 both being dissertation-style projects. Students almost universally refer to these when talking about the different components of their degrees.