A cross-disciplinary approach to capstone design at Howard University
Over the last seventeen years, the Department of Mechanical Engineering has fulfilled a major requirement in accreditation guidelines to offer a meaningful capstone course to students in the senior year by involving industry in the design and execution of design projects. Projects have ranged from the design of a Ram Air Turbine in completed in 1990 to the Design of a Removable Roof System for the 2007 Pontiac Solstice automobile completed during the 2005-2006 academic year. To further improve on the conduct of the capstone design and to give students an experience that mirrors what is expected in industry, the department expanded the two-semester capstone course to include students from the departments of Electrical Engineering, Marketing and Art. The addition of students from these allied departments enabled the course instructors and industry representatives the flexibility to define real world problems for which solutions were needed in order to enhance product development in a competitive environment.The purpose of this paper is to describe the cross-disciplinary approach to the execution of a capstone design course among academic departments that have traditionally not collaborated with each other. Examples of the work of the students are presented to demonstrate the value of such collaboration to the learning experience of students. The paper concludes with a discussion on the challenges involved in such collaboration but most importantly, to highlight the numerous opportunities that can be exploited to enhance the experience acquired by students.
Cross-disciplinary approach Capstone design
Emmanuel Glakpe Lewis Thigpen
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Howard University, Washington DC 20059, USA
国际会议
上海
英文
91-97
2006-08-17（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）