2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Building Innovation through Industry-Experiential Learning: A Pilot Program Integrating Engineering Education and Corporate Partnership

Presented at CEED Technical Session 4: Workforce Development, Professional Skills & Industry Partnerships

Preparing engineers to navigate rapidly changing industrial environments requires more than technical expertise; it demands creativity, adaptability, and innovative thinking. To address this educational need, an experiential learning program was developed to connect undergraduate engineering students with industry professionals to solve authentic, open-ended challenges identified by corporate partners. The initiative applies experiential learning frameworks and design-thinking methodology to position students as active innovators rather than passive learners.

The program launched as a pilot that included collaboration with an industry partner and two distinct innovation projects. Each project was addressed by a multidisciplinary team of three engineering students representing different majors. Over the course of a semester, the teams engaged in the full design-thinking process, including need identification, stakeholder engagement, ideation, prototyping, and business analysis. Students were encouraged to balance technical feasibility with business, environmental, and social considerations while developing viable, innovation-driven solutions to real industry problems.

Preliminary feedback from the pilot indicates that students demonstrated significant growth in their ability to define ambiguous problems, collaborate across disciplines, and communicate technical ideas in professional contexts. Industry mentors observed that students contributed fresh perspectives and creativity to authentic operational challenges.

This work-in-progress paper presents the program’s structure, implementation framework, and lessons learned from the pilot. The long-term goal is to expand this model to additional industry partnerships, enabling students to gain meaningful experiential education opportunities outside the classroom while remaining fully engaged during the academic semester.

Authors

Ms. Bianca A Valsecchi University of Florida [biography]

Bianca Valsecchi is an undergraduate student pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering at the University of Florida, graduating in May 2026. This academic year, she serves as the Director of the Innovation Gator Network Inspiring Technology and Entrepreneurship (IGNITE) within the Engineering Innovation Institute. She was also the Program Coordinator for the IGNITE Industry Scholars Program during the 2024-2025 academic year, an industry-embedded initiative connecting students with corporate innovation projects. Her goals include applying innovation, collaboration, and interdisciplinary teamwork to create a meaningful impact within engineering education to better transition students into the industrial workplace.
Dr. Melissa Mae White University of Florida [biography]

Dr. Melissa Mae White is an Instructional Associate Professor in the Engineering Innovation Institute within the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering at the University of Florida. She teaches and coordinates courses in innovation, creativity, and entrepreneurship, focusing on developing experiential learning frameworks that integrate design thinking and multidisciplinary collaboration into engineering education. She serves as the faculty lead for the Innovation Gator Network Inspiring Tech and Entrepreneurship (IGNITE), a university-wide student innovation initiative housed within the Engineering Innovation Institute that bridges classroom learning with real-world creative problem solving.

Dr. White is also affiliate faculty in the Center for Arts, Migration, and Entrepreneurship at the University of Florida. Her teaching and research interests center on creativity development, innovation competency, and peer-to-peer learning models that empower students as co-designers of their educational experience. She has led efforts to expand co-curricular innovation programming through partnerships with industry, ensuring sustainability and access for students across disciplines. Her current work examines the effectiveness and challenges of student-led ecosystems in fostering creativity, accountability, and entrepreneurial mindset development within higher education.
Keira Mae Woodhead University of Florida [biography]

Keira Woodhead is an undergraduate student pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Florida, graduating May 2027. During the 2025–2026 academic year, she serves as the Program Coordinator for the IGNITE Industry Scholars Program, an industry-embedded initiative connecting students with corporate innovation projects. She was also a participant in the IGNITE Industry Scholars Program during the 2024–2025 academic year, where she gained firsthand experience working within a corporate-sponsored innovation team. Her academic interests center on biomechanics and human movement, and she plans to pursue a PhD focused on biomechanics and assistive technologies. Her goal is to use engineering and interdisciplinary research to improve human mobility while helping connect students to real-world engineering challenges.

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