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Collaborating with Local Practitioners to Lead a Capstone Civil Engineering Design Course

Abstract

The paper describes a civil engineering capstone design course led by faculty and practitioners. The objectives, content, and organizational structure of the two-quarter capstone course are summarized. The primary student activity involves work on a multidisciplinary private sector development or public works project. During the first term, the students prepare a written Statement of Qualifications in response to a specific Request for Qualifications. During the second term, the students prepare a written Design Report with a full set of calculations and design drawings. Each term, the students present their ideas orally to a panel of faculty and practitioners. An instructional team of three to five faculty members and up to thirty senior-level practitioners leads each course offering. The practitioners play an essential role in the delivery of the course, acting as section instructors, guest speakers, interview panel members, and project advisors. Details regarding the responsibilities of the instructional team members are included in the paper. The paper also describes how local practitioners are prepared for their assignments. The new course represents a valuable program assessment tool since class activities permit direct measurement of program outcomes. Included in the paper are discussions of the course assessment processes and the procedures used to promote grading consistency among the faculty and practitioner evaluators. Improvements made to both the course and program are discussed.

Introduction

Our civil engineering capstone design sequence recently morphed from an individual study course into a directed study offering. A number of concerns motivated this change, including the desire to provide a realistic multidisciplinary capstone design experience and the desire to improve our degree program's assessment processes. Since the new course was introduced, over six hundred students working in over one hundred design teams have completed four different projects, all under the direction of four faculty members and a team of practicing professionals. To date, over forty local professionals have participated as members of the instructional team.

In this paper, we discuss the motivation for changing the format of the course. We also describe the structure of the new course and the activities that course participants are expected to complete. In developing and implementing the new course, we relied extensively on support provided by local civil engineering professionals. The local professionals were recruited to assist with the course so that (1) we could provide realistic design experiences for the students and (2) we could integrate professional practice issues directly into the course curriculum. In the paper, we describe the specific roles that local professionals play on the instructional team.

Both faculty members and local practitioners helped to assess course and program outcomes. We present course and program assessment data in the paper, along with a brief discussion of the results.

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Fiegel, G., & DeNatale, J. (2010, June), Collaborating With Local Practitioners To Lead A Capstone Civil Engineering Design Course Paper presented at 2010 Annual Conference & Exposition, Louisville, Kentucky. 10.18260/1-2--16226