As the semester winds down, students across Binghamton University are working on final projects, some of which go beyond campus.

The Binghamton University Philanthropy Incubator project was designed to give students first-hand experience in donating grants to non-profit organizations, while students within Watson School of Engineering and Applied Science are working on their Capstone Design Presentations.

Both projects bring these students out of the classroom, allowing the culmination of their studies to be put to use in the real world.

PHILANTHROPY INCUBATOR

The public administration and social work departments within BU’s College of Community and Public Affairs teamed up to offer students the opportunity to donate grants to charities of their choice.

A group of undergraduate students and a group of graduate students were given $10,000 each to donate. The limitations of the assignment were that the money had to go to non-profit organizations and that the charities were to have some sort of impact on the Broome County area. The project was funded by the Sunshine Lady Foundation, the Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund and Campus Compact, the Harriet Ford Dickenson Fund and student fundraising.

The project is in its second year at the graduate level, but this is the first year it has been extended to undergraduate students.

David Campbell, an assistant professor in the public administration department who worked with both groups, said the students were largely in control of their own projects.

‘My job was to facilitate the conversation and help them learn about different things,’ he said. ‘I had no vote in which charities were selected.’

The grants were distributed Tuesday at the University Downtown Center. The undergraduates chose to donate their money to The Handicapped Children’s Association, The Center for Discovery, the Boys and Girls Club of Broome County and the Family Enrichment Network.

William Lesser, a sophomore majoring in philosophy, politics and law, said that he never realized making a decision on where to donate the money would be so difficult.

In the graduate class, students focused on charities for low-income children and the elderly, donating to charities such as the Family Enrichment Network and the Broome County YMCA.

‘It got me to establish perspective in both working for organizations and in being a donor,’ said Lakia Jordan, a graduate student with a dual major in public administration and social work.

CAPSTONE DESIGN

The revealing of the final projects for students in Watson took place Friday. For this assignment, students within the Capstone Design class were put into teams to come up with projects that could be considered useful to major companies.

The two professors in the class, Kurt Rogers, a lecturer in the electrical and computer engineering department, and Colin Selleck, a lecturer in the mechanical engineering department, went to both local and national companies to get the project ideas.

‘We go to different companies and see whether our students can build anything for them,’ Selleck said.

One team of students is working on building a very small satellite to be shot up into space. The satellite, which also may be used for a space environment experiment, is outfitted with solar panels that will help store energy. Other projects included a new hardware system for Lockheed Martin and working on compressed hydrogen tanks for a lift truck.

For the Capstone class, eight projects were selected to be eligible for the MacDonald Family Prize for Excellence in Senior Design, which is awarded to the senior design team that is considered to have the ‘best’ project. The first-place team designed an engine-quality biodiesel fuel made from dining hall cooking oil. The second-place team designed a laboratory prototype of a computer-controlled fuel cell-powered vehicle operating under varying load conditions.