Making the connection: Successful cross campus collaboration among students

In fall 2015, a senior capstone course (CIS 457 Senior Design Lab 1) of multidisciplinary groups from the majors of computer science, information systems, and software engineering aligned with a senior-level entrepreneurship class (ENTR 410 New Venture Creation) consisting of entrepreneurship majors and minors within the school of business to successfully form teams collaborating towards a common project vision. All of the students, in the College of Engineering and Business, have not had a shared experience even though the college was initiated in 2009 and even though efforts to combine a senior-level class have been discussed since 2009. The approach described in the paper enabled the two, relatively small, classes to connect like-minded, commonly-interested students into functioning groups. The approach enabled several notable achievements: (1) A variety of academic, logistic, and structural hurdles were managed through the approach; (2) Teams were voluntarily formed in a duration of four class periods from each course within the first two weeks of a fall semester, and (3) Joined teams have a market perspective driving the resulting technical innovation. Each of these achievement areas is discussed. The planning and scripting of the sessions drove the successful approach. In order for other small-sized programs to benefit from the experience, the plans and general structure are shared, and the value of each component is described as a driver to the process. Finally the projects' achievement and validation are discussed.