The Role Of The Faculty Advisor In The Capstone Design Experience: The Importance Of Technical Expertise

The capstone design experience in the mechanical engineering program at Michigan State University is achieved through the Mechanical Engineering Design Projects course: ME 481. This course utilizes industrially sponsored design projects for which the company makes both a financial investment ($3500) and a personnel investment (a staff engineer is assigned to the project.) Each team of four students works on the project for the semester under the supervision of a faculty member. About 160 students enroll in the course each year, requiring the acquisition of nearly forty design projects by the course coordinator. In an academic year about thirteen faculty are assigned to supervise these projects. The course coordinator is responsible for the specific assignment of a faculty advisor to a design project. Among the faculty, there has been considerable discussion concerning how the faculty advisors should be assigned to project teams and what role their technical area of expertise should play in this assignment. This role is the focus of the paper. This paper continues with a discussion on the bearing that faculty advisor technical expertise has on the design project. The results of a student survey and industrial sponsor survey on this issue are then presented and discussed. Final remarks conclude the paper.