Tell us about Experiential Project-based Learning at UT Dallas JSOM

Within the Naveen Jindal School of Management (JSOM), senior undergraduate students are required to complete an Internship, a Capstone project, and 100 hours of community service as part of their undergraduate degree.

JSOM’s missions is to have students participate in real-life projects with real-life clients to develop professional etiquette and to prepare for a professional career. Businesses benefit as students will be working on a project for one semester and develop alternative solutions to their business problem, without having to use scarce internal resources. Besides, companies may develop a talent pipeline as they may hire students after graduation.

UTDsolv Capstone has been founded by JSOM to enable profit companies and public organizations to connect with students to work on a real-life project and to enable students to acquire transferable skills that will help them land a professional career.

Dr. David Parks
Assistant Dean,
Capstone Projects

Interesting point that some companies develop a talent pipeline from these projects. Do you have any advice for maximizing the value of talent recruitment out of projects and communicating this value to school leadership?

To maximize the value of talent recruitment out of projects, EL programs should consider a comprehensive approach that spans the entire student-sponsor relationship. Right from the start, sponsors should be made aware that they are welcome to hire talented students once they have completed the project and graduated from their program. To ensure students are ready for that opportunity, programs should build presentation skills throughout the capstone course through multiple in-class opportunities such as status reports, midterm check-ins, and a final presentation. Students should also present their recommendations to sponsors in person if possible, and ideally on-site at the company, at both the midterm and end of the semester. Programs can further support sponsor recruitment efforts by connecting them with career management centers that can help organize campus visits and mock interviews.

Long-term partnerships with sponsors are especially valuable. Inviting them to return with follow-up projects in consecutive semesters allows them to recruit from a wider pool of talented students while also witnessing individual students’ professional growth over time. Success stories from these relationships should be actively promoted through news articles, social media, and marketing materials to raise the program’s profile and attract new partners.

Programs benefit greatly from the right people at the table. Hiring industry professionals who are well connected within their companies to teach the capstone course can help promote the program and its students from the inside. Similarly, engaging industry advisory board members and making them aware of student talent encourages them to champion the program within their own professional networks.

To communicate the value of talent recruitment to school leadership, programs should focus on three key areas: data, visibility, and storytelling. Having clear, up-to-date metrics on hand (like the number of students hired by capstone sponsors in a given semester) gives leadership the concrete evidence they need to understand the program’s impact. These figures, paired with success stories, should be regularly published through news articles, social media, and marketing materials to keep the program visible and top of mind. Equally important is giving leadership a firsthand look at student achievement by inviting them to Capstone EXPOs, where student teams present their final work before an industry panel. Seeing that interaction between students and industry professionals in person can be far more persuasive than any report.

What differences do you observe in doing projects with community partners with UTDserv vs industry partners in UTDsolv?

UTDsolv Capstone works primarily with for-profit businesses, whereas UTDserv works with non-profit and public organizations. As UTDsolv only assigns senior students to projects, UTDserv assigns all freshman, sophomore, junior and senior students. Students who complete a project with a non-profit organization complete their 100 hours undergraduate community engagement requirement. Also, UTDserv projects tend to be a bit lighter in terms of scope and deliverables.

Non-profit partners need more support defining scope and deliverables of their projects, whereas UTDsolv partners are usually better equipped to define their projects scope and deliverables independently.

UTDserv includes students from across all four years. Are there any special guardrails for students earlier than senior year, or is the reduced project scope, relative to UTDsolv, sufficient? What benefits are there from introducing client-based projects to students earlier than senior year?

When introducing live client-based projects to first-year, sophomore, and junior students working with nonprofit organizations, the instructor plays an especially important role in guiding and coaching students throughout the project. That said, engaging students with real clients before their senior year carries meaningful benefits. Working alongside nonprofit and public organization leaders helps students develop awareness of broader societal issues and the specific business challenges these organizations face. It also gives students an early opportunity to expand their professional networks, which can better position them for internships and future employment. The experience sharpens transferable skills like communication, presentation, time management, and problem solving, in a real-world context that makes students more attractive to future employers. When sponsors are connected with the same students across consecutive semesters, they gain the added benefit of watching those students grow professionally over time, deepening the relationship between the program and its community partners.

Scaling EL is a big topic for many schools, especially now in light job market disruption concerns. What is the history of EL at your school and how did you achieve this scale?

At the beginning of 2020 UTDsolv Capstone started partnering with 10 companies and assigned 20 projects to fewer than 200 students. In 2025, roughly five years later, we doubled these numbers and partnered with 143 unique companies and assigned 185 projects to more than 1,500 students.

A few factors have contributed to this exponential growth. In 2020, JSOM made the Intership, the Capstone course and community service required components in all undergraduate business degress at JSOM. Students from all academic areas – Marketing, Information Technology, Supply Chain Management, Business Analytics, Business Administration, Finance, Accounting, Global Business, Health Care Management, and Human Resources – are required to complete a Capstone project, an internship and 100 hours of community service before they graduate. Students take the capstone for grades and credit as part of their degree plan at JSOM.

JSOM’s initiative resulted in UTDsolv Capstone, a centralized office within JSOM that was made responsible for coordinating and managing the solicitation of capstone projects, onboarding new sponsors, and monitoring all the projects via a centralized digital platform, aka EduSourced. Before the Dean decided to make the capstone course a requirement, the course was offered only by a few departments within JSOM and there was no central office to coordinate the projects.
UTDsolv Capstone laid down a robust structure for the capstone course, requiring the students to work on the same deliverables throughout each capstone course, guaranteeing all capstone sponsors having similar capstone experiences, irrespective of which semester they onboarded.

UTDsolv Capstone started building a pool of industry professionals, senior business leaders with a relevant and completed master’s business degree, who are expected to take their turn to teach the Capstone course in any given semester. These adjunct instructors serve as the ideal coaches for the students, being able to tap out of a rich and diverse industry experience and sharing a wide array of business skills with the students.

As part of their teaching assignment these industry professionals are required to bring in at least three capstone projects from their company or any companies in their business network, which guarantees a sustainable pipeline of business projects.

What is needed to support Experiential Learning on a large scale?

From the start, UTDsolv Capstone has been managed and coordinated by full-time dedicated project management staff and faculty. To sustain future growth and guarantee the influx of Fortune 500 sponsors and challenging projects, continued support is needed in soliciting projects, continuously promoting UTDsolv Capstone to the business community and onboarding new sponsors.

How many projects do you recruit each year and what resources are needed to support this?

In the academic year 2024-2025 UTDsolv Capstone partnered with 143 companies and assigned 185 projects to more than 1,500 students, who were assigned to 311 project teams. The academic year of 2025/26 is still in progress, and heads to similar or even greater numbers.

Main resources UTDsolv Capstone uses to support this:

• Dedicated Senior level (Director, VP, Executive) industry professionals who bring in projects from their own company or professional network.
• A centralized office that manages and coordinates the capstone projects and ensures a continuous pipeline of new capstone projects and follows up with sponsors.
• A mix of dedicated full-time professors and industry professionals who teach the capstone course and share their professional skills with the students.
• An efficient digital platform, like EduSourced, that guarantees the effective archiving of capstone projects and an efficient platform for managing and coordinating the projects.

To learn more about Experiential Project-based Learning at UT Dallas Jindal School of Management, visit UTDsolv and UTDserv.