What it is and when it starts
Most Porter majors end in a two-semester capstone: a real project, usually for an outside sponsor, delivered by a small team. Planning starts the term before — sponsor calls go out, teams form, and scope is negotiated so day one of the sequence is not a standing start.
Team formation
Teams are three to five students, sometimes assigned, often self-selected around a project. Mixed-skill teams do better than teams of friends with the same strengths. Before you commit, talk about work styles, schedules, and what each person wants to get out of it.
Working with a sponsor
A sponsor is a client: they bring a problem, some access, and feedback; they are not your manager and cannot keep expanding the scope. The first month produces a written statement of work — deliverables, boundaries, meeting cadence, and who decides what "done" means. Revisit it when the project drifts.
Milestones and the faculty coordinator
The sequence is paced by gates: a proposal, a design review, a prototype demo, and a final delivery, each graded. A faculty coordinator meets your team regularly, catches teams that are quietly stuck, and is the person to tell early — not late — when a sponsor goes quiet or a teammate disappears.
Intellectual property
Who owns what the team produces depends on the sponsor agreement and university policy — sometimes the sponsor, sometimes shared, sometimes the students. Get the IP terms in writing at the start through the technology-transfer or capstone office, especially if the work could become a product or a publication.
The showcase
The year ends at a public showcase where teams present to sponsors, faculty, employers, and families. It is also a hiring event — employers walk the floor. Build the poster and the demo for someone who has three minutes, and practice the pitch in a presentation-practice room before the day.
Fictional information
UW–Porter Falls is a work of parody. Every office, person, building, phone number and statistic on this page is invented; nothing here describes a real institution or a service you can actually contact.