The Senior Design Process At Purdue University

This paper examines the participation of practitioners in senior design based on experience at Purdue University where senior design involves all seniors in their last semester before graduation and is titled “Civil Engineering Design Project”. It is described in the catalog as “Planning, design, and analysis of a civil project; an integrated and realistic group project involving as much as possible all major aspects of the civil engineering profession.” This high enrollment course (30 to 100 students per semester) has been taught since the early 1960’s and there have been many approaches to teaching it. Involvement of practitioners has varied from nearly no involvement through nearly total responsibility for the course. The author has observed the teaching of this course for thirteen years and has the lead responsibility for the course in the spring semester for the past four years. The paper describes the course and approaches to teaching it and will summarize observations of what worked well and what did not work well regarding the involvement of practitioners. Recommendations are made for effective use of practitioners in senior design. Introduction and Background on Senior Design The capstone design course in Civil Engineering at Purdue University, CE498 has been ongoing since 1960. Drnevich 1 provided the evolution of this course from 1960 to 2001. A summary of these will be provided herein. Table 1 lists the projects designed in this course. Perusal of the table indicates significant diversity of project types. Most of the projects are real in the sense that they were either in consideration or in process at the time that they were being designed in the course. Students worked with actual project information and generally had to diligently search to obtain that information. Design products of the course were not used in the actual construction, but in many cases had an influence on actual designs. This occurred because persons actually involved in the real projects almost always participated in the course. Hence, the definition of “practitioner” associated with this course is a broad one that includes: 1. Practicing engineers who are engaged in the design of the actual or similar projects; 2. Contractors who have to estimate, bid on, and build the actual or similar projects; 3. Owners (or owner’s representatives such as engineers in Purdue’s Physical Facilities Department and the Indiana Department of Transportation); 4. Users of the projects who critique functionality and serviceability of the facility; 5. Engineers who represent vendors and associations of engineered products and design software; 6. Professionals associated with human resource, finance, marketing, and business issues; 7. Public officials who represent the community’s perspective; and 8. The Civil Engineering Advisory Council members who periodically review the course. P ge 10323.1 Proceedings of the 2005 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference and Exposition Copyright © 2005, American Society for Engineering Education Table 1. Listing of Capstone Design Projects at Purdue 1 9 6 0 Candy Factory 1 9 6 1 Tippecanoe Co Airport Retention Reservoir 1 9 6 2 Research Park/Residential Purdue Parking Problem 1 9 6 3 Belt Line Railroad Tricounty Airport 1 9 6 4 Purdue Research Bldg Wabash Channel Imp. 1 9 6 5 Continuing Education Fac. Lafayette Industrial Pk. 1 9 6 6 Reclamation Gravel Pit 1985 Campus Master Plan 1 9 6 7 Wildcat Ck. Res. Housing Indy-Chicago Trans. Corridor 1 9 6 8 Wholesale Warehouse Lafayette Urban Redevelopment 1 9 6 9 Purdue Airport Tower Safety Rest Area 1 9 7 0 Pre-stressed Concrete Plant Race track 1 9 7 1 Local By Pass Camp Talitha 1 9 7 2 Local by-pass Road Camp Talitha 1 9 7 3 Wildlife Park Winter Recreation Site 1 9 7 4 Central States Power Plant Wabash River Channelization 1 9 7 5 Riverfront Park Tri City Airport 1 9 7 6 Hog Abattoir Shopping Center 1 9 7 7 Local Subdiv. Park Cluster Housing Cumberland 1 9 7 8 Caterpillar Industrial Park Auto Race Track 1 9 7 9 Retirement Health Center Master Plan Happy Hollow 1 9 8 0 Master Plan IV Tech W.L. Park/ Community Ctr. 1 9 8 1 Waste Energy Generation Plant Sagamore Regional Shopping 1 9 8 2 Lafayette Elks Subdivision Tippecanoe State Park 1 9 8 3 Local Expressway Animal Science Center 1 9 8 4 Animal Science Center Local by-pass 1 9 8 5 Recreational Facility Dairy Farm Happy Hollow Park 1 9 8 6 Purdue Master Plan Wabash River Renovation 1 9 8 7 Tippecanoe Trash Transfer Station Florida Underwater Habitat 1 9 8 8 Salisbury Community Park 5 County Incinerator 1 9 8 9 Tippecanoe Truck Stop Arlington Race Track 1 9 9 0 Heliport/ National Guard Landfill/Incinerator 1 9 9 1 Wastewater Plant for WL Recreational Complex 1 9 9 2 Regional Airport Recreation/ Convention Ctr. 1 9 9 3 High Speed Rail Corridor Wetlands Viewing Center 1 9 9 4 Food Science Ed. Building Retirement facility 1 9 9 5 Purdue Airport Terminal and Runway Exp. Landfill Remediation 1 9 9 6 Incinerator for Mid Indiana. Research Park including Hdqtrs Building 1 9 9 7 Site and Design Grocery Store Agronomy Research Center 1 9 9 8 Aquatic Center 1 9 9 9 Visual & Performing Arts Center Extension of U.S.231 2 Diamond Interchange at I65/SR26 SR 26 and US52 Improvement 2 0 0 1 High Performance, Large Scale laboratory Reworking Mackey Arena 2 0 0 2 New Purdue Airport Terminal Facility Alternates for Mackey Arena 2 0 0 3 Bowen Civil Engineering Lab Expansion of Mackey Arena 2 0 0 4 US 231 Relocation Eval. of Mackey Arena Proposals 2 0 0 5 Menards Home Supply Mega Store P ge 10323.2 Proceedings of the 2005 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference and Exposition Copyright © 2005, American Society for Engineering Education In a typical semester, it is not unusual for ten or more “practitioners” to be involved in the course. The nature of the involvement may range from presentation of a technical session to participation as a reviewer and critique in the sessions where the student teams make their formal presentations. Course Details The course is taught every semester and is limited only to seniors in their last semester before graduation. This requirement allows for having a more complete preparation for taking this course. Class sizes have ranged from a low of about 25 students to more than 110 (with 22 teams). Students are formed in teams of five persons, but sometimes teams of four or six persons are allowed, depending on the total number of students in the class. Originally, and until recently, each student on a team represented a civil engineering subspecialty. Typically, there would be a structural person, a geotechnical person, a environmental/hydraulics person, an environmental person, a construction person, and a transportation person. The assignment of these subspecialty responsibilities was based on student interest, elective courses taken, and occasionally, expediency. Frequently, students were assigned to areas outside those of their interest or where they only had a basic level course. These students were challenged to become productive team members. Typically, the course has three to five faculty persons assigned each semester with one faculty person having the role of lead instructor. The faculty persons assigned are from the various subspecialties listed above. Additionally, there are three to five teaching assistants assigned to the course, again from the subspecialties. The faculty and teaching assistants constitute the “instructional staff” for the course. They participate in the planning of the course through weekly staff sessions, attend all of the technical sessions of the course, give some of the technical presentations, and are engaged in grading of the presentations and products. Course Objectives While objectives for this course were clearly established by the faculty who founded and taught the course over the years, with the advent of Engineering Criteria 2000 2 , our faculty updated the course objectives in the mid 1990s: By the end of this course, the student will be able to: 1. Integrate the technical sub-disciplines of civil engineering, develop criteria for design and perform trade-off and alternatives analyses to produce cost-effective solutions. 2. Gather relevant data, have discussions with the client, identify and use applicable regulations, codes and other information. 3. Communicate site analyses, work programs and engineering design detail to both technical and non-technical customers. 4. Do integrated project planning, scheduling, and cost analysis for a moderately-sized, civil engineering project. 5. Perform a reasonably detailed design to meet customer requirements using, where appropriate, software and computer techniques to satisfy design objectives and to prepare requested construction documentation. 6. Experience the benefits and applicability of multi-disciplinary teams to achieve successful project completion. Myers-Briggs Type Indicator in Team Formation Starting in the mid 1990's, course lead instructor Robert Whitford began having the students take the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator 3 (MBTI) test. The MBTI identifies personality types by use of four letters, E or I, S or N, T or F, P ge 10323.3 Proceedings of the 2005 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference and Exposition Copyright © 2005, American Society for Engineering Education J or P as described in Table 2. The test was scored and a qualified MBTI person was invited to a class session to interpret the test and help students and instructors gain a better understanding of and respect for personality differences. The instructional staff frequently makes use of the MBTI of team members along with advice from the qualified MBTI person in resolving disputes and poor performance of teams and/or members of a team. Table 2. Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Categories and Descriptions Type Symbol Description EXTROVERTS E Try things out, focus on the outer world of peopl