Industry Immersion: The Impacts of a Sabbatical Deep-Dive.

Sabbatical experiences provide an opportunity for faculty to immerse themselves in current scholarship, to explore new areas of research, and/or to pursue professional development. This paper reports on one capstone design instructor's experiences during a yearlong sabbatical in industry. The author spent six months working as part of an engineering team at one company, and then spent four months on short visits to 24 engineering companies across the country to gain an inside look into a variety of engineering disciplines, multiple approaches to engineering design, and different workplace environments. This paper shares feedback from companies regarding important skills for entrylevel employees. The paper describes how the sabbatical experience impacted the author's approach to teaching the capstone design course, and modifications the author made to the course as a result. In addition, the paper discusses the process for coordinating such short visits and recommendations for pursuing a similar sabbatical experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]