Capstone Project Leads to Instant Jobs for Computer Science Graduate Students
An entire team of ambitious graduate students from Ying Wu College of Computing (YWCC) received full-time job offers from New York City-headquartered IT and business consultancy company Net@Work, in recognition of the innovative technology solutions they developed last fall semester as part of a Capstone project sponsored by the company.
The Capstone project is a required course for all YWCC undergraduates, which recently also opened to graduate students. The course brings together teams of students to develop software solutions to real-world problems provided by industrial sponsors.
Working on the project proposed by Net@Work were graduate computer science students Devang Doshi, Amol Bodhare, Dharmaraj Paradkar, Manleen Sabharwal and Parthdevsinh Rathod. They were tasked with developing a tool to meet Net@Work’s pressing need for a unified collaboration platform, spurred by the firm’s acquisition of multiple companies and growing client base.
To boost employee engagement and knowledge management, the team of developers used open-source and front-end frameworks to conceptualize, design and build a customized, ubiquitous intranet tailored to match the firm’s IT infrastructure strategy.
Deployed on Microsoft Azure, Net@Work was able to launch the intranet with key features that enable its 250 employees across 18 offices in the U.S. and Canada to easily connect and collaborate. The intranet implementation was also a proof of concept to explore customization on Office 365. Net@Work is now extending the project and automating more processes on the Office 365 platform.
Impressed with the team’s innovative solution, which promises to drive business, facilitate connections and speed operations, Net@Work offered all the students full-time positions. Doshi accepted a managerial position in Net@Work’s project management office, where he’s migrating three systems to a singular, cloud-based customer relationship management platform.
"Net@Work’s hiring the entire Capstone team is testimony to both the professional quality of NJIT computing students and to the effectiveness of our Capstone program in building meaningful relationships between our students and their corporate mentors,” said YWCC Dean Craig Gotsman. “We are delighted at this success story and look forward to continuing to fuel the tech talent pipeline, especially for the burgeoning tech sector in New York City."
For 15 years, leading companies from the tri-state area have flocked to YWCC’s Capstone Project course, which provides computer science, information technology and information systems students with an opportunity to tackle real-world problems and interact with practitioners from industry.
Working with YWCC’s eager talent pool, the companies often walk away with cost-effective software solutions — and it isn’t uncommon for students to land jobs with the sponsoring companies when the course culminates in a Capstone showcase at the end of the semester.
“Our showcases are another type of advanced career fair for our students, as they demonstrate their collective intelligence through pitches and live demonstrations,” said Capstone Program Director and Senior University Lecturer Osama Eljabiri. “Our Capstone program has delivered and continues to deliver jobs in many shapes and forms.”
