This presentation examines the value of industry/Education cooperation in regard to improving product development and sales as well as examining it’s effect on student scores, skills, and self esteem. Additionally, the success of the resulting products in the marketplace is examined. The cost of product development has caused a need for accessible and economical design and prototyping of parts and assemblies Both small business and privately generated product ideas are turned over to Engineering Technology and Technical Graphics students for design, drawing, and prototyping. Beneficial and detrimental factors to industrial and educational cooperation are discussed. Significant increases in standardized test scores and design skills were noted in some cases after the cooperative development of these designs and prototypes. Various uses for product design and prototyping partnerships in education and industry are examined and their benefits to students, educators, administrators, and industry are examined. Individual case studies are examined with the following general results: ∑ Successful economic products are rare. ∑ Problem solving and technical skill increases in students result from these ventures. ∑ That the Engineering Technology and Technical Graphics student’s ability to solve design problems and enthusiasm improve as student’s progress through their class work with further increases after the cooperative ventures. ∑ An educational and industrial consortium improves student chances for employment and interaction with industry. ∑ Recruitment and retention benefits may result from the publicizing of these efforts. ∑ Educational / Industrial cooperation benefits both groups and help defray the costs of acquisition of advanced technology and getting products to market. While the time constraints placed on both the students and the instructors is a problem, the benefits are great enough to make this cooperation worthwhile Cooperative ventures of this kind result in more ideas going into production, increase student learning, and help small-scale production facilities and private individuals increase their profitability. Introduction P ge 765.1 “Proceedings of the 2002 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright „ 2002, American Society for Engineering Education” The purpose of this study was to determine the usefulness of business/education partnerships in the areas of design and rapid prototyping. It was thought that the Rapid Prototyping and design of industrial projects would be valuable in increasing the translation between 2-D drawings and actual 3-D parts. In order to accomplish this, the following research questions were proposed: ∑ Does offering a lower cost design and prototyping service provide a useful service? ∑ Do Industry/Education partnerships in design and Rapid Prototyping result in viable products? ∑ Do these partnerships increase student scores on standardized tests? Following the initiation of a new low cost or pro bono cooperative program for design and prototyping at Southeast Missouri State University a steady influx of inventors and companies showed interest in pursuing development of products that had been tabled due to prohibitive cost or distance factors. Typically, in working with new products, we were presented with hand drawn rough sketches from entrepreneurs and industry personnel to translate into working drawings, rendered pictorials, and rapid prototypes. Rapid Prototyping (RP) and Solid Modeling give industry, educators, and students the ability to model complex parts in a relatively short time. Often the custom prototyping of the product by conventional means is so expensive that it is not attempted. This is especially true because the initial prototype often reveals flaws in the looks, operation, or strength of the part. Since each part is a one of a kind project, economies of scale are not realized and the cost remains the same for each succeeding trial. While this is also true of Rapid Prototyping the initial cost is usually much lower and thus succeeding iterations are also lower in cost. While the advent of High Speed Machining has lessened the need for Rapid Prototyping due to the fact that machined models take less time than previously, RP still is a faster way to obtain a prototype in general. Some parts, of particularly complex geometry, can only be produced by the RP process.