Mechanical Engineering Student Support Fund

Who are we?

The Mechanical Engineering Department at San Jose State University strives to provide the engineering workforce needed for the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond. Our mission is to provide the best educational experiences for our undergraduate and graduate students through a variety of hands-on experiences. Mechanical Engineering is best taught through hands-on experimentation. During their studies at the ME department, our students complete up to five projects, a number of labs with experimentation work, and a year-long senior project. 

A good majority of our senior projects are sponsored by the Bay Area Industry and the student groups get opportunities to work with industry professionals during the period. A small fraction of our undergraduate students and a majority of our graduate students get to experience cutting-edge research in faculty research labs. We take pride in our ability to provide such unique exposure to our students before they graduate with their Mechanical Engineering degree.

Why are we raising the money?

Recently, the department has been struggling to support the resources for students to complete the hands-on experiences. While the state support is only sufficient to keep the lab-based classes running, we often need to upgrade or replace equipment in these labs. 20% of our senior projects do not have sponsors and students often spend money out of their pocket due to the department’s inability to support them financially. Several of our Masters projects also require additional sponsorship. While our students produce amazing research working with our faculty, several of them are unable to disseminate their results in front of a professional audience due to a lack of funding for conference travel.

How can you help?

We would love your support to raise a “Mechanical Engineering Student Support Fund.” This money will be exclusively used to support students’ hands-on experiences, experimentation work, senior and master's projects, research projects, and travel to professional conferences to disseminate cutting-edge research. Several of our students come from economically disadvantaged communities and your donations can make a difference in how they achieve their dreams with a Mechanical Engineering degree.