Industrial sponsored design projects addressed by student design teams

The development and implementation of a 4 quarter course sequence starting in the Spring of the Junior year is the focus of this paper. The first course focuses on having teams of students take an industrial based project from inception through a conceptual design process culminating in a final design specification. The senior year sequence is structured to have 3-5 member teams function as a type of "engineering consultant firm" to address industrial sponsored projects. The teams initially work with the sponsor to develop a "product design specification" (PDS) as the foundation of the project. The teams then develop the conceptual design of the project during the Fall quarter in order to get sponsor approval to move toward final implementation or prototype development during the Winter and early Spring teams. The course culminates with a day long symposium where each team makes formal presentations of their project and designs to the campus community, the sponsor representatives, and invited guests from the local community and potential industrial sponsors. The paper presents the specifics of the Junior and Senior level courses, brief overviews of the related sophomore and junior prerequisite courses, the method of obtaining the industrial sponsors, team formation process, sample projects and assessment results from the first two offerings of the sequence.