The Contribution of Capstone Projects in Green/Renewable Energy Areas to Growth of the Engineering Curriculum in Global Sustainable Development

The current global considerations regarding sustainable energy use and generation combined with the need of a well-rounded and skilled workforce able to serve a global sustainable industry leads inevitably to new trends and strategic areas in engineering education fields. Our task as educators in the engineering realm is to prepare students to be more effective in a global context as well as to be able to respond to today’s challenges, giving them the essential competencies for global engineering work. The paper aims to present the contribution of several capstone projects developed in the past five years by our students to the growth of the engineering technology curricula in our university. The main aspects presented are related to the integrative approach in green energy harvesting and sustainability, with a clear assessment of student-led projects developed during past AYs and how they contributed directly to development of leadership skills along with untamed creativity. While a series of projects are strictly related to energy harvesting, serving as models of energy efficiency and sustainable energy power transmission, others are related to sustainable green energy manufacturing. A technical description of the projects along with clear connections between projects and curriculum development will be described in detail. Introduction Current global energy and sustainability trends are rapidly moving towards conservation of natural energy resources and to cleaner and greener energy generation. Although traditional energy sources (such as fossil fuels) still meet most of our energy demands, the benefits of renewable energy have no match of being environmentally friendly while they are virtually inexhaustible. Sustainable development includes solving the sustainable energy resources problem[1, 2]. “A sustainable energy system may be regarded as a cost-efficient, reliable, and environmentally friendly energy system that effectively utilizes local resources and networks.”[3]. The development of renewable and sustainable energy sources will lead to an increase in energy independence which, in turn, will lead to advancement in local and regional sustainable manufacturing industries and to promotion of regional development of the workforce specialized in the renewable energy area with a direct impact upon workforce development. Our Engineering Technology program offers a combined electrical and mechanical engineering technology major, filling in the gap between the industry demand and the current educational majors offered in the area and nationwide. Looking at the global educational and industry demands, our curricula augmented with several courses relating to renewable energy, energy conversion, green energy manufacturing and sustainability. As a result of this enhancement we had an afflux of capstone project topics in the green/renewable energy area reaching a maximum this year when all of our capstone topics are related directly to green and sustainable energy sources or sustainable manufacturing [3-6]. As a consequence, our curricula moved towards educating students in controversial topics such as global warming, energy security, air pollution, ecological damage, reducing the carbon footprint and green-house emissions. During the past two years, several new courses have been developed and further steps have been taken to improve the existing curricula. Students are actively involved in self-directed learning to find sustainable solutions to design problems, and to recognize that they are part of a global community [4]. These projects also served as a platform for course learning modules to enhance existing curricula as well as to develop new courses that ultimately led to a new minor in Green and Sustainable Energy in our department. This paper presents the contribution of all these projects to the new developments, and to building our modern curricula, including assessment, module spin-offs and continuous improvement based on student and faculty feedback. To instruct students in complex and challenging topics such as climate change, energy sustainability, and environmental damage, reducing the carbon footprint and green-house emissions, just to name a few of them, requires a curricular change in engineering education[6]. To fill in the gap between the industry demand of specialized job skills and the current educational majors offered in the Greater Philadelphia and surroundings local colleges and universities, our Drexel University, Engineering Technology (ET) program offers a combined electrical and mechanical engineering technology major, with several courses related to renewable energy, energy conversion, green energy manufacturing and sustainability. Our main goal is to create a highly skilled professional workforce ready to “hit the ground running” after graduation and also having most of the qualities of a “global engineer”, a critical thinker and an innovator which is in total agreement with ABET criterion c (“an ability to design a system, component, or process to meet desired needs within realistic constraints such as economic, environmental, social, political, ethical, health and safety, manufacturability, and sustainability”) [7], [8]. During the past 8 years, our ET program developed courses oriented towards energy conversion and green energy and sustainability. Due to this enhancement of our program, the past five years have seen an afflux of capstone project topics in the renewable energy area. During last and current academic year (AY), more than 50% of the capstone projects were in the green and renewable energy and sustainability fields. This coincides with a general trend of students’ increased interest in developing sustainable systems and honing their acquired skills in sustainable energy systems development through our series of capstone design courses, which is more in tune with the aforementioned criteria. Synopsis of Senior Design Capstone Courses Senior Design is a 3-quarter sequence (3 credits each sequence) during Fall, Winter and Spring terms, and is a mandatory course (core curriculum) – MET 421, 422 and 423. The syllabus for each sequence is attached. The course involves developing a comprehensive project during these 3 quarters; including a demonstration of a working prototype (a physical product rather than a computer based model or data from experiments/process/procedure). Students must develop a new or improved product or technology during their senior design sequence. Each project will be developed by a team of 3 to 4 students. Usually teams are a mix of both mechanical and electrical engineering technology concentrations. This course is an excellent capstone experience, which requires both teamwork and individual skills to solve a modern industrial problem. Senior design project seminars in fall, winter and spring quarters bring the students, faculty, and industrial partners together to see the student’s results and to give them the additional experience of public presentation for their work. Course Objectives: The main objectives of the 3 course sequence are geared towards students ‘abilities to identify and specify a design problem of current commercial or technological interest and subsequently formulate and evaluate design solutions, for which they will analyze and identify optimum designs. Students will generate alternate solutions and analyze them based on their proposed topic to be solved. During their product/process development they should study and present societal and environmental impact of their product/process, develop and test their prototypes and prepare and present a detailed progress report as well as a final engineering report and present their work in a seminar-type venue. As Student Learning Outcomes the following are pertinent to our sequence: 1) Students gain experience and expertise in solving real-world design problems and communicating their results in a professional format, in both written reports and presentations. 2) Significantly improve students’ skills in the areas of system analysis and design, technical writing, public speaking, teamwork, project and time management. Senior design course sequence is a part of our core curriculum since the inception of this program (2002) and ever since the following schedule has been followed: