Collection

2004 GSW

Authors

Paul Ruchhoeft

Introducing Emerging Technology into the Engineering Curriculum Through Capstone Projects Paul Ruchhoeft Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Richard Bannerot, Ross Kastor, and Gangbing Song Department of Mechanical Engineering University of Houston AbstractIn the one semester, three engineering department, capstone design course taught in theCullen College of Engineering at the University of Houston, multidisciplinary teamswork on design projects provided by local industry and the faculty. A rich source of gooddesign problems associated with

Collection

2004 GSW

Authors

Richard Bannerot; Ross Kastor; Paul Ruchhoeft

4334 capstone design course, required of all students in the Departmentsand Industrial Engineering and Mechanical Engineering. This paper describes thechallenges and the specific problems encountered and the changes, i.e., solutions, thathave been implemented. The capstone design course that existed in 1998 had beenessentially unchanged since 1981. The Pre-Existing CourseThe pre-existing course was a one-semester, 3-hour credit course that was offered everyfall and every spring on an alternating day-night schedule by a single instructor. Teamsof four students were assigned (through a bidding process) a project. About 80% of theprojects were provided and sponsored by local industry and a majority of them

Collection

2004 GSW

Authors

Jenna Terry; Paul Ruchhoeft

andWriting Center are implementing plans that are effecting university-wide curricularchange. The Interaction between the Writing Center and Cullen College of EngineeringSenior Capstone DesignThe capstone design course in the Department of Mechanical Engineering (ME) at theUniversity of Houston has been around since the early 1960’s. In the mid-80’s theDepartment of Industrial Engineering (IE) joined the course so that project teams werecomposed of both ME and IE students, but the relative sizes of the Departments (annualgraduations rates of about 60 BSME and 10 to15 BSIE) and the nature of the projects(mostly ME in nature with only a few in IE) prevented an interdisciplinary experience forall design teams. Six years

Collection

2004 GSW

Authors

Shunmugham R. Pandian

offeringpredominantly undergraduate engineering programs of limited size. Robotics and Mechatronics Projects at UM-FlintThe Robotics and Mechatronics Laboratory was started at UMF in fall 2001. The labprovided the resources for a lab course to accompany an introductory senior-level courseon robotics and mechatronics. The resources additionally came to be used to supportsenior capstone engineering design projects, senior/junior Independent Study courses,junior/sophomore Supervised Study courses, as well as faculty research in the areas ofcontrol, robotics, and mechatronics. Most of the projects involved teams of three or morestudents. A summary of the projects and their outcomes is given in Table 1.Computer hardware and software issues are

Collection

2004 GSW

Authors

E. H. Shaban

, built, tested, and documented by each student atthe end of the semester. For the past decade this experience has enriched and prepared thestudents to embark in more challenging projects at the senior capstone design experience.

Collection

2004 GSW

Authors

Richard Bannerot

activity9. In the senior capstone course, taken by threedepartments10 (Electrical and Computer Engineering, Industrial Engineering, andMechanical Engineering) in which students are forced to form groups with representationfrom at least two departments, about 65% of the course grade is determined by asemester-long project provided by local industry or the faculty. (Generally each grouphas a different project.)The ethnicity data for all students are presented in Table 1. Four ethnic groups (as selfreported) are recognized: Caucasian, Hispanic, Asian (east and south), African American,and Other (Middle Easterner, Pacific Islander and American Indian). The first columnprovides the distribution (per cent) of each ethnic group in the classes; the second

Collection

2004 GSW

Authors

Donald J. Bagert; Stephen V. Chenoweth

required course for both CS and SE majors. Proceedings of the 2004 ASEE Gulf-Southwest Annual Conference Texas Tech University Copyright © 2004, American Society for Engineering EducationIn order to help provide students in the Software Requirements and Specification course with acomprehensive introduction to requirements elicitation and specification before their real-worldclient experience in the senior capstone sequence, the term project for CSSE 371 involves thedevelopment in small teams of a requirements specification, from problem statement to deliveryof both specification and user interface prototype. Each team was assigned a client who was aRHIT faculty member

Collection

2004 GSW

Authors

E. H. Shaban

professionalcomponent. Student can realize what the engineering profession can accomplish. The Proceedings of the 2004 Gulf-Southwest Annual Conference Texas Tech University Copyright c 2004, American Society for Engineering Educationprojects made in this course can be used as stand alone capstone design project or tocompliment it. References1. 2002-2003 Criteria for Accreditation, www.abet.org.2. John P. Uyemure, Physical Design f CMOS Integrated Circuits Usin g LEDIT” PWS Publishing Company 1995. PSPICE User’s Guide, Cadnce PCB System Division, Portland, ORV972233. S. Yalamanchili, “Introductory VHDL From Simualtion to Sythesis