Learning Challenges and Opportunities from Seismic Retrofit Capstone Projects

Civil and Environmental Engineering students at Seattle University are required to complete a three-quarter capstone project that is team-based and industrially-sponsored under the supervision of a liaison engineer from industry and a faculty member. These projects offer students opportunities to apply concepts from analysis and design classes to solve real-world problems. In the last two years, student teams have completed three seismic retrofit projects of different complexity levels. Benefits to the students that are particularly unique to these projects include direct application of design principles, exposure to specialized structural software and seismic assessment/retrofit standards and codes, and the use of visualization tools to convey solution schemes to clients. During the execution of the entire project, students are challenged to learn fundamental concepts of earthquake engineering without having formal training on the subject. In addition, students have to adhere to a standard seismic assessment code and produce reasonable solutions that could be constructible in practice. Because these issues go beyond the knowledge and experience that a typical undergraduate education can offer, close collaboration and mentoring by faculty and industry liaisons are critical to the project success. This paper presents an overview of three seismic retrofit capstone projects and describes the students’ experience of experiential learning. Results from a student learning survey are also presented.