Engineering course claims Triple-E Award as a top entrepreneurial offering

They are the inventors of the future.

Many Schulich School of Engineering students have entrepreneurial solutions to societal problems and simply need resources to increase their marketing or business acumen to take their projects further.

Enter: The Entrepreneurial Capstone course.

Available to fourth-year students, it’s an eight-month crash course on transforming an idea or concept into a product ready for market.

Touted for making students more resilient and ready for the startup world, the course also captured the attention of the Triple-E Awards, receiving third place in the global Entrepreneurship Course of the Year category.

“I met the five other finalists during the conference and knew about their excellent programs and the work they were doing, so I knew it would be a very tight race,” says course director and associate professor Dr. Colin Dalton, PhD. 

“When they said we were third, I was jumping up and down.”

The recognition is added validation for the program, which has seen outstanding projects come through over the past few years.

Outlining the course

Launched in 2019, the Entrepreneurial Capstone course is a prime example of experiential interdisciplinary studies.

Guided by Schulich faculty and Haskayne School of Business teaching assistants, the goal is to turn engineers into entrepreneurs through an eight-month journey.

Dalton says student teams must identify a real-world need, invent and build a product to fill it, and then develop a plan to bring the product to market.

“They get an immersive experience as they are told to think of the teaching team as potential investors, so their mindset from the start is not just on passing a final-year engineering project, but on how to create a product to solve an issue in the marketplace,” he says.

The teams receive limited funds to buy materials for their projects, including $1,500 per team from TD Insurance and another $1,000 per team from the Hunter Hub for Entrepreneurial Thinking, as all teams are automatically enrolled in the LaunchPad program and must complete it.

During their time in LaunchPad, teams build out business plans and different analyses, then discuss their ideas with potential consumers and industry experts.

Delivering the pitch

Over the last couple of years, the projects that went onto capture Schulich’s Engineering Design Fair gold in the Entrepreneurship category have helped set the Entrepreneurial Capstone program apart from others.

FetchFinder: Play Beyond Sight took the crown in 2024, aiming to enhance playtime for dogs, particularly those with visual impairments or that were easily distracted.

This past spring, it was NeuraSense capturing the attention of judges with its neuromonitoring device for children on life-support, which also won the TC Energy ingenuity Pitch Competition at Inventures and a runner-up award at the Liftoff! Pitch Competition.

As future students see the potential of the program, Dalton says it will help drive more interest.

To help it evolve, he’s also working with counterparts at Purdue University and the University of Bristol — who finished first and second in this year’s Triple-E Awards, respectively — on a workshop this December to share best practices and potentially form a longer-term collaboration.

“I also want to work with teams on how to support them after they graduate,” Dalton says. 

“We are looking at opportunities like starting a donor fund to kick-start their companies and to build on what they have done to this point, and hopefully take them to the next level.”

The next Engineering Design Fair, proudly sponsored by TD Insurance, is scheduled for April 1, 2026.