Development Of A Joint Bme, Me, And Ee/Ce Senior Engineering Design Seminar

In the spring term of 2003 the design instructors from the departments of Biomedical Engineering (PK), Mechanical Engineering (DK, JB) and Electrical and Computer Engineering (LM, JB, AD) met to discuss the possibility of collaboration on interdisciplinary design projects and the development of a common design lecture for all four majors. There had been previous limited student exchanges between ME and BME and EE/CE began offering the first standalone design project courses during the 20032004 academic year. A common design seminar series was agreed upon, this was launched as a required interdisciplinary design one credit course in fall 2003. Both the ME and BME design courses were decreased from 3 credits to 2 for the fall term only. The EE/CE sequence (AD) is in its first full term offering, it remains a 3 hour course. DK was initially designated “instructor in charge”. The ability to meet with senior design students from all four majors at a common time has given weight to our ability to bring in a good speaker once, to talk to all classes. The common meeting time also provided an excellent meeting forum to bring in sponsors of interdisciplinary projects to discuss these matters with a single gathering, rather than being required to meet with two or more classes. The fact that many of the core design lectures are now spread over the term in the seminar has allowed us to start student design projects earlier (mid October rather than late November). This change has facilitated coordination with future fall offerings of a course sequence in marketing, both in the Engineering School and outside, with the Owen School of Management at Vanderbilt. Other advantages which arise from this common seminar format are: the ability to form interdisciplinary teams, the ability to build partnerships through projects involving business, law and medical school(s) components, the ability to discuss engineering professionalism in a multidisciplinary format, the ability to discuss safety as a generic rather than a disciplinary issue, etc. P ge 932.1 “Proceedings of the 2004 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2004, American Society for Engineering Education” This paper will discuss our development and first experience with a common design seminar, and will explicitly discuss feedback from the student body regarding the design seminar evaluation.