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This article deals with the fact that most engineering students have had professional internships at some point during their college careers, and many institutions required a project as part of a capstone course. But each of those experiences was limited. Internships were for a short amount of time and rarely enabled even those students who were given the opportunity to apply their skills a chance to see a project from start to finish. And the assignments in senior-level courses never brought students in contact with real-life clients. Something more was needed. The answer: service learning. The concept is simple. Working in a team, undergraduates learn real-world skills by defining, designing, building and testing engineering solutions that assist local nonprofit community organizations and sometimes government agencies. Service learning in engineering has proved to be a win-win situation for both sides of the equation. The students learn the additional "soft" skills they need for their careers--teamwork, communication, project management and customer service. Meanwhile, the community groups get the technical expertise that they need but for which they lack the staff and funds. With service learning, "students see engineering as more than just a set of math problems," says William C. Oakes, an associate professor of engineering education at Purdue University. "They see it as a means to change people's lives, see career paths they didn't see before in nonprofits, and the compelling nature of the projects helps students take more risks than they would have otherwise."[author]