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Session 2425

The Sophomore Engineering Clinic I: Integrating Statics, Solid Mechanics and Product Development in a Sophomore Level Design Course Anthony J. Marchese, Eric Constans, Kevin Dahm, Kathryn Hollar, David Hutto, Frances Johnson, Carlos Sun and Paris von Lockette, Jennifer Kadlowec Doug Cleary and Beena Sukumaran

College of Engineering Rowan University 201 Mullica Hill Rd. Glassboro, NJ 08028-1701

Abstract - The Engineering Clinic is a design course that is taken every semester by every engineering student in the College of Engineering at Rowan University. A major objective of the Sophomore Engineering Clinic I (the third course in the 8-semester sequence) is to provide the foundation necessary for students to become creative and effective engineering designers. This objective is accomplished by requiring all students to complete a semester long design and development project. During the Fall 2000 semester, the semester-long project was to design and develop a portable bridge for domestic use that would enable a homeowner to cross a typical backyard brook or stream with their riding lawn mower. The portable bridge was intended to be marketed directly to the homeowner via a retail outlet (e.g. The Home Depot) and needed to be easily assembled by the consumer and adaptable to various sized spans. During the first half of the semester, students were divided into 27 separate conceptual design teams of four students each and given 5 weeks to develop and document their conceptual and configuration designs. At the midpoint of the semester, three proposals were chosen for full-scale prototype development. During the second half of the semester, students were reassigned to a product development team, which had a specific task to complete in support of the full-scale development of one of the three chosen bridge products. A major reason for the success of the bridge project was that it reinforced the engineering science principles that were being taught concurrently in the more traditional engineering courses. For example, using principles from Statics and Solid Mechanics, each team analyzed the stresses in each two-force member and calculated the deflection due to bending of various components. Student surveys suggest that the bridge project helped students to better understand the engineering principles that were taught concurrently in their supporting coursework. Furthermore, the surveys suggest that students actually applied those principles to the design and development of an engineered product. Introduction The College of Engineering at Rowan University is composed of four departments: Chemical Engineering; Civil and Environmental Engineering; Electrical and Computer Engineering; and Mechanical Engineering. Each department has been designed to serve 25 to 30 students per year, resulting in 100 to 120 students per year in the College of Engineering. The size of the program has been optimized such that it is large enough to provide specialization in separate and credible departments, yet small enough to deliver a truly multidisciplinary curriculum in which laboratory/design courses are offered simultaneously to all engineering students in all four

Proceedings of the 2001 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright  2001, American Society for Engineering Education

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Sun, C., & Johnson, F., & Hutto, D., & Hollar, K., & Constans, E., & Kadlowec, J., & Sukumaran, B., & Marchese, A., & von Lockette, P., & Dahm, K., & Cleary, D. (2001, June), The Sophomore Engineering Clinic I: Integrating Statics, Solid Mechanics And Product Development In A Sophomore Level Design Course Paper presented at 2001 Annual Conference, Albuquerque, New Mexico. 10.18260/1-2--9789