Become a Mentee
Join a Senior Design project for one semester. Learn how real engineering teams make decisions, test ideas, document work, manage uncertainty, and communicate technical progress.
Explore the mentee experience → applications are open
Senior Design Mentor–Mentee Program
Experience Senior Design before your senior year.
Earlier-stage engineering students learn alongside a real Senior Design project for one semester. Senior students build technical leadership by mentoring one student at a time.
75hours for students completing the pre-approved Honors Experience
1academic semester of participation for each mentee
1:1maximum of one mentee per Senior Design mentor at a time
Opento Honors and non-Honors students; participation is unpaid
Why this program exists
Learn engineering before you are expected to lead it.
Senior Design is often a student's first sustained experience with a large, open-ended engineering problem. This program gives younger students an earlier look at that process while giving seniors a structured opportunity to practice technical leadership.
Mentees do more than sit in meetings. They are expected to ask questions, understand the project's progress, and contribute through appropriately scoped work such as documentation, technical summaries, literature review, testing observations, or other project activities.
Two ways to participate
Choose the role that fits where you are now.
Become a Mentor
Stay fully part of your existing Senior Design team while individually mentoring one earlier-stage student. Your teammates do not need to participate.
Explore the mentor experience →
Not just shadowing
Understand what happened — and why.
The purpose is to develop technical understanding, not simply meeting attendance.
- Observe engineering design, testing, research, and project development.
- Ask questions about decisions, tradeoffs, methods, and results.
- Contribute through meaningful work appropriate to the mentee's experience level.
- Practice technical communication and professional project documentation.
- Reflect on learning at the middle and end of the semester.
University Honors
A pre-approved Honors Experience.
The program is open to everyone. Eligible University Honors students may also complete their participation as a pre-approved Honors Experience with the applicable 75-hour requirement and reflections.
For mentors, ordinary Senior Design work performed independently does not count as mentoring time. Mentorship-specific activity — including project explanation during shadowing, direct discussions, reviewing mentee work, preparing learning activities, mentee interviews, and related responsibilities — may contribute to the mentoring experience.
See how the Honors component works →Honors is optional.
You do not need to be an Honors student to become either a mentor or a mentee. Honors requirements apply only to students completing the experience for Honors credit.
Interested in ?
There is currently no application deadline. Matches are made based on project availability, student interests, schedule compatibility, and fit.