AC 2010-1861: LINKING SENIOR DESIGN PROJECTS TO RESEARCHPROJECTSEvan Lemley, University of Central OklahomaBaha Jassemnejad, University of Central OklahomaMatthew Mounce, US NavyJamie Weber, ParsonsSudarshan Rai, UnknownWilly Duffle, University of Central OklahomaJesse Haubrich, University of Central OklahomaBahman Taheri, Alphamicron Page 15.845.1© American Society for Engineering Education, 2010 LINKING SENIOR DESIGN PROJECTS TO RESEARCH PROJECTSAbstractSenior design projects form an important capstone for most engineering disciplines and mustconsist of the realistic application of the engineering design process. Some senior engineeringstudents
Technology, Madras, India, and Ph.D. in applied analysis from State University of New York, Stony Brook. He is a senior life member of IEEE and a member of ACM and AITP. Page 25.1109.1 c American Society for Engineering Education, 2012 Reflections on Teaching a Consolidated Capstone Design Course to a Mixed Student BodyI. IntroductionDesign is widely considered to be the central or distinguishing activity of engineering 1. TheCapstone Design course has usually been designed as a senior project laboratory to allowinggraduating seniors become prepared for working in
Professor in the Department of Physics, State University of New York at Oswego. Ieta is a member of Professional Engineers of Ontario. Page 25.729.1 c American Society for Engineering Education, 2012IMPLEMENTATION OF AN UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH COURSEA capstone course comes as the peak experience for students in higher education programs. Thechallenge may sometime extend to their advisors as well. We report our experience with teachinga senior research project course to Physics students at a teaching university using a recently setup Applied Electrostatics Laboratory. The design of the course allowed
, Fundamentals of Space Flight Systems, Astronomy, and Sr. Capstone Sequence. He was Department Chair for six years in the start-up of the Engineering Physics program. He enjoys mentoring undergraduate students in aerospace, sensors, and energy-related research projects. Some of the research areas include spacecraft nano-satellite technologies, satellite payload instrumenta- tion, High Altitude research Platform (HARP) experiments, wave particle interactions in space, space- flight X-ray imagers, construction and renewable energy engineering and architecture, and philosophy of science. Dr. Voss has worked as PI on many NASA, Air Force, Navy, NSF, and DOE research grants and has published over 120 scientific papers. hnvoss
mechanical,electrical and optical engineering including statics, AC and DC circuits, and photonics, openingthe students to upper level courses in these disciplines. The capstone sequence begins with a 10week junior design course where a series of small design projects tests their ability to solveproblems in a variety of disciplines. Following the junior design course, the students have a 20week senior design sequence where they design, build and deliver a prototype for an externalclient. Aside from these core components the students gain additional breadth through courses inmath, chemistry, and computer science. This curriculum was designed to include room for atechnical area of focus outside of the engineering physics curriculum through a set
, computer architecture, and peripheral hardware issues are discussed throughout thecourse so that the students gain a working knowledge of these topics. Hands-on learning isemphasized through simulation, hardware and software labs, and a final project. Also weemphasize the system-level design, high-level language, and connections between the Clanguage, assembly, and the underline hardware architecture. The outcomes of this course haveshown that this approach (1) inspires engineering physics students to be interested inmicrocontrollers, (2) provides students with a less compartmentalized view of manyhardware/software topics, and finally (3) underscores the importance of system-level design withjust enough understanding about individual components or
Page 12.747.7The first procedure in this section ensures the curriculum is reviewed annually for the subjectarea components required by ABET (math, science, and engineering topics, plus a generaleducation component).The second procedure in this section ensures that all graduates have a capstone experienceduring, and not before, the fourth year of the curriculum. It explicitly states that the capstonedesign experience incorporates engineering standards and realistic constraints that include mostof the following considerations: economic; environmental; sustainability; manufacturability;ethical; health and safety; social; and political. It also prescribes that means of assessmentinclude, but are not limited to: student design project notebooks
fundamentals of quantum mechanics with mathematicalrigor. Students are mostly seniors, though a few juniors typically take the class as well. Studentsin the class have all taken Modern Physics, and most have taken the other 300-level courseslisted above. In that sense, Quantum Mechanics is a capstone course and can build on theknowledge and skills gained in the previous coursesWe currently incorporate a computational component as a final project in the course, developedthrough the NSF grant for computation mentioned above (DUE-0311432). In this module,students calculate and plot several electron density functions for a hydrogen atom using the vonNeumann accept/reject Monte-Carlo technique.13 We have developed an additionalcomputational project that
innovatively apply them in more advanced(and less academic) settings, such as senior capstone projects and on-the-job challenges in thefuture workplace. Application of techniques for generating and evaluating ideas are described.To enhance the benefits of group creativity and facilitate real-time electronic brainstorming inthe classroom, we use InkSurvey with pen-enabled mobile computing devices (iPads, tablet PCs,Android devices, etc.). This free, web-based software was developed for collecting real-timeformative assessment of learning, but using it in this setting effectively mitigates many of thesocial issues that typically plague brainstorming in a group setting. The focus, instead, is onpaying attention to the ideas of others while encouraging
assignment was utilized to allow students an opportunity to creatively expresstheir understanding of a particular topic(s) that had been discussed in class. This activity wasgiven near the end of the semester and in some ways served as a “capstone” project for thestudents. Students were allowed to select a topic(s) based on the course readings, class lecturesand discussions, any of the video segments, or topics brought up through the guest lectures. Inaddition, students were encouraged to consider the topic of their short paper as a springboard fortheir creative projects.Students were required to submit a proposal, in 250 words or less, that included an overview oftheir proposed project. Abstracts were submitted electronically through Blackboard. In
physics curricula in the U.S.A.shows courses with names such as “advanced experimental physics,” “experimental methods,” orsimply “physics lab” or “engineering measurements. 1” (Indeed, a “measurements lab” is also acommon feature of mechanical engineering undergraduate curricula.2) Our institution, theUniversity of Wisconsin-Platteville, is no different: the “engineering physics laboratory” iswhere students first undertake longer, more open-ended experiments than is done in theintroductory physics sequence.The EP Lab has a prerequisite of Modern Physics, and is typically taken in the first semester ofthe third year. It almost always is completed before our other lab course (Sensor Lab), it is theonly specific course prerequisite for our capstone
AC 2011-1477: DEVELOPMENT OF AN UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCHLABORATORYAdrian Ieta, Oswego State University College Adrian Ieta (M’99) received the B.Sc. degree in physics from the University of Timisoara, Timisoara, Romania, in 1984, the B.E.Sc. degree in electrical engineering from the ”Politehnica” University of Timisoara, Timisoara, in 1992, and the M.E.Sc. degree and the Ph.D. degree in electrical and computer engineering from The University of the Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada, in 1999 and 2004, re- spectively. He was with the Applied Electrostatics Research Centre and the Digital Electronics Research Group, The University of Western Ontario, where he worked on industrial projects and taught. He is
usefulness of the material offered herein, the author wishesto acknowledge that portions of this material are no doubt better suited for upper-divisioncourses or capstone project courses. However, if appropriately adapted and carefully interpretedby an experienced instructor, there are also elements of this material that should prove Page 26.1273.21meaningful and valuable for most students in engineering mechanics and physics courses.Appendix: A Typical Value for the Parameter Most of the results produced by means of the cubic law are fairly accurate if 0 2 . It is thenprudent to obtain a typical value of for a real-world situation
outcomes of our assessment was an increase in the number of courses offered as wellas an increase in the frequency in which we can offer them. As a result of our assessment effortswe have been able to expand our physics program by adding the following upper-level courses: Astrophysics Mathematical and Computational Physics Physics Capstone Seminar Statistical Mechanics Waves and OpticsPrior to 2007, the physics program included two “tracks” that students could follow as theyprogressed through the curriculum. These tracks were in computational and applied physics.Since our initial assessment, we’ve added a traditional physics track and the applied physicstrack is now a track in chemical physics. We have also been able