Benefits
By partnering with EWB on the Undergraduate Research Program, universities have the opportunity to engage with local and international communities, and provide real-world challenges to students. This helps students to understand their role as engineers within modern society, both in Australia and beyond.
Support and Expectations
Every student must have an academic supervisor at their home institute, and this is the most important person for their project. It is expected the university supervisor will provide academic support and rigour, and ensure universities academic requirements are meet.
Project Promotion
Twice a year a list of projects will be distributed to an appropriate university coordinator, to identify appropriate topics, potential academic supervisors and offer to students. Projects available to specific universities will be based on previous work, expertise and facilities.
Assessment
All assessment will be completed by universities, as for any other project, according to their requirements. A small number of EWB awards are available each year to students, and projects of a particularly high standard can be put forward by universities (one per university) to be evaluated by EWB. Any awards will be presented at the annual EWB National Conference at the end of November.
IP and Confidentiality
To ensure research and outcomes can be utilised, identified IP (Intellectual Property) from projects will need to be available to EWB and its community partners. Arrangements for this access will be identified on a per project basis, based on existing university-student IP arrangements. Typically IP generated by a student is owned by that student, and hence IP agreements will be between EWB and the student. However, this should be discussed with the academic supervisor. The standard IP agreement is available here. If the student chooses to do so they may also provide an open-source IP agreement for their work.
Some projects may also be subject to confidentiality conditions. If present these will generally be related to information or research directly relating to a specific community, and will be identified and discussed on a case by case basis. Any university ethical standards will be expected to be identified and met by the student.