Competitions for Environmental Engineering Capstone Design Projects: Student Preferences and Learning Outcomes

There are a variety of national design competitions that can be used to form the basis of projects in environmental engineering senior capstone design courses. In recent years, teams of students in the Environmental Engineering capstone senior design course at the University of Colorado Boulder (CU) have participated in three different design competitions: the regional design competition organized by the local Water Environment Federation (WEF) chapter, the AECOM North American design competition, and an intra-collegiate competition sponsored by Halliburton. These competitions have been optional projects among service-learning projects for local and international communities and projects for local industries. This research compared the student preferences for different project types and the learning outcomes from the different projects. Matching the students’ declared specialization within the environmental engineering degree program with a project helped improve student motivation, which is a challenge given the six different concentrations available to students at CU in water, air, ecology, remediation, chemical processing, and energy. Initially, students were not interested in participating in the design competitions. More recently the idea seems to have caught on, perhaps motivated in part by two teams winning their competition at the national level. However, student interest is still higher in service-projects. Similar learning outcomes could be achieved in both service-learning and design competition projects. This research points to the importance of offering a range of project options to students, and reinforces that competition projects can meet a broad range of learning goals.