Engineering Opportunities for Students
Building, Designing and Solving Right Away
At Detroit Mercy, your work doesn’t stay in the classroom. Starting in your freshman year, you’ll:
- Work on projects that impact our local communities
- Apply engineering skills to human-centered challenges
- Learn in a city that offers unparalleled access to industry and community partnerships
Detroit gives our students a competitive advantage — connecting you with diverse populations, real client needs and meaningful experiences.
Hands-On from Day One
Leaning by Doing
You’ll build confidence by applying what you learn from our industry-experienced faculty by engaging in experiential labs, applied projects and summer co-op experiences.
Engineering That Changes Lives
Detroit Mercy Engineering students create enabling technologies, designing and testing personalized solutions to meet unique needs. These projects prepare students for careers in biomedical engineering, product design, rehabilitation and innovative technologies.
Senior Capstone Project
In your senior capstone project, you won’t be running simulations or doing the same work as everyone else. You collaborate with real clients, uncover their needs and create customized solutions. Thanks to our small class sizes, each project is truly unique.
Research
Engineers do research, too! Students investigate and publish on challenges like homelessness, community planning, energy use, architecture, transit and leadership curriculum.
Faces on Design
Faces on Design is a cross-disciplinary, patient-centered program that pairs Engineering students with advanced Nursing students to create custom assistive devices that improve lives in the disability community.
Students work directly with clients to understand daily challenges, identify solutions, and design, build and test prototypes tailored to individual needs. The two-semester experience concludes with a public design presentation, celebrating student innovation and impact.
Purpose + Impact in Detroit
Computer Science student creates Advising App to improve class scheduling.
Mechanical Engineering students and faculty modified a Jenny-Lind crib to make it wheelchair-accessible, preserving its original design and providing guidance for safe use.
Architectural Engineering students teamed up with a non-profit organization and studied how the building used energy. They designed a better system, estimated the costs and created a professional proposal for the client. Their plan would save the organization about $250,000.
Architectural and Civil Engineering students toured Focus: HOPE to assess facility conditions and develop improvement plans for the organization’s buildings.
Environmental Engineering students and faculty installed solar arrays on the Engineering Building roof and created a lobby display showing real-time energy production. The system, funded by Michigan and UDM, powers about 40% of the building’s lighting.