An Undergraduate Capstone Design Experience Utilizing Student Engineer Student Manager Teams
- Conference
- Location
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Chicago, Illinois
- Publication Date
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June 18, 2006
- Start Date
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June 18, 2006
- End Date
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June 21, 2006
- ISSN
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2153-5965
- Conference Session
- Tagged Division
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Design in Engineering Education
- Page Count
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14
- Page Numbers
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11.210.1 - 11.210.14
- DOI
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10.18260/1-2--864
- Permanent URL
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https://peer.asee.org/864
- Download Count
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487
Paper Authors
Kenneth Soda U.S. Air Force Academy
KENNETH J. SODA. Dr. Soda is the first permanent civilian faculty member of the USAF Academy’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, appointed in 1993. His areas of interest include electronics, circuit and very large integrated circuit design. He holds an advanced degree from University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Soda is the recipient of the Tau Beta Pi Teacher of the Year Award (Colorado Zeta Chapter) and the USAF Academy Outstanding Educator Award.
Gregory Toussaint U.S. Air Force Academy
Albert Batten U.S. Air Force Academy
ALBERT BATTEN. Dr Batten has earned degrees from Colorado State University (BS - Mathematics and PhD - Electrical Engineering) and the University of Denver (MS - Electrical Engineering). He has served on the faculty of the US Air Force Academy for fifteen years, eleven in Electrical and Computer Engineering and four in Physics. He was Professor of Electrical Engineering at Colorado Technical University for eight years between assignments at the Air Force Academy. Dr Batten is a former officer of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Division of ASEE.
Abstract
NOTE: The first page of text has been automatically extracted and included below in lieu of an abstract
An Undergraduate Capstone Design Experience Utilizing Student Engineer – Student Manager Teams
Abstract
The capstone design experience is widely accepted as an essential element of contemporary engineering education. With the encouragement of the ABET and in recognition of their innate value, many undergraduate institutions have more recently established interdisciplinary capstone design experiences. Design experiences involving students of differing engineering disciplines offer the possibility of more complex, meaningful projects and introduce traditional engineering students to the terminology and technology of related disciplines. At the same time, the value of undergraduates trained in the Systems Engineering and Systems Engineering Management disciplines has been realized both by industry and the Department of Defense. While capstone design experiences which involve interaction among students schooled in different engineering and engineering technology disciplines are becoming more common, those which also include students trained in Systems Engineering and Systems Engineering Management are less common. A design experience in which student engineers and student managers must cooperate to plan, design, fabricate, test and report on their designs can be extremely enlightening for all involved and very closely mimics “real world” design experiences. We describe here our first year’s experience with combined student engineer-manager capstone design teams. We compare the experiences and impressions of both engineering and management students who worked on these interdisciplinary teams with students who had no management trained students involved in their design experiences. The impressions and experiences of faculty project mentors are included as well. Finally, we note some of the challenges encountered by faculty in the organization and management of this design experience. The evidence will show that while this arrangement has its difficulties, the quality of the design experience has been enhanced in significant ways.
Overview
The capstone design experience is widely accepted as an essential element of contemporary engineering education. With the encouragement of the ABET and in recognition of their innate value, many undergraduate institutions have more recently established interdisciplinary capstone design experiences. Design experiences involving students of differing engineering disciplines offer the possibility of more complex, meaningful projects and introduce traditional engineering students to the terminology and technology of related disciplines. The experiences also permit students to build teamwork skills in preparation for professional practice. At the same time, the value of undergraduates trained in the Systems Engineering and Systems Engineering Management disciplines has been realized both by industry and in particular by the Department of Defensei. While capstone design experiences which involve interaction among students schooled in different engineering and engineering technology disciplines are becoming more common, those which also include students
Soda, K., & Toussaint, G., & Batten, A. (2006, June), An Undergraduate Capstone Design Experience Utilizing Student Engineer Student Manager Teams Paper presented at 2006 Annual Conference & Exposition, Chicago, Illinois. 10.18260/1-2--864
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