Project Pitches

The ETC offers a project-based curriculum and in general, the projects originate in three ways: external sponsors, faculty research and student proposed projects through the “pitch” process.  Some of our most exciting projects begin as student pitches.  The student-pitch process was designed to give students the opportunity to explore an original idea that is of particular interest to them and fits into the scope of practical research being done at the ETC.  A typical student pitch team typically consists of 3-5 students, and they must be able to convey their innovation, creativity and passion for the subject area.

Current ETC Student, Jacob Wilson is part of a Fall, 2018 Pitch Project called Isetta Engine, which is building a new game engine from the ground up.  Jacob describes ‘pitching’ an idea in the following way: “The pitch process really forces you to consider many different perspectives beyond just having an idea.  During our pitch, we iterated on the idea over 16 times after talking to different faculty members”.  Although building a new game engine is a highly technical project, the team enjoyed speaking to faculty with different backgrounds because they presented questions that had not been considered.

Students currently have the opportunity to participate in Round 1 of the pitch process for projects that will take place during the Spring, 2019 semester.  Professor Drew Davidson mentioned that during the pitches, “ETC faculty will look for original ideas from student teams that are passionate to collaborate together to make something amazing”.

Jacob along with teammates Caleb Biasco, Jared Ettinger, Chaojie Zhu, and Yidi Zhu is enjoying the teams “pitch” project this semester because they have been able to shape the project from the beginning, but even more so, he is excited about the team’s passion behind the project.  “We are all really excited to be working on this topic so it has been such a positive learning environment”.

 

The Isetta Engine team, left to right: Caleb Viasco, Jacob Wilson, Jarred Ettinger, Yidi Zhu and Chaojie Zhu

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