Capstone Design in Engineering Community Engagement Course

Abstract

Community engagement is a growing area of attention within civil engineering education due to student interest and evidence of its benefits in supporting learning outcomes, among other factors. At Purdue University, a large curricular community-engaged design program, Engineering Projects in Community Service (EPICS), has partnered with Engineers Without Borders USA (EWB-USA) to give students academic credit for international civil engineering projects. EPICS and EWB-USA align in their utilization of multi-year partnerships between communities and vertically-integrated student project teams. The EPICS EWB-USA course section served as the capstone experience environment for a team of senior design students from the Division of Environmental and Ecological Engineering in the 2019–2020 academic year. This paper provides a case study to illustrate how to meet the new ABET Criterion 3 (student outcomes), in the broad space of civil engineering and related fields, with experiences that incorporate community-engaged learning. The pedagogical techniques and assessment methods utilized to support the development and measurement of the student’s outcomes are described. Discussion is presented on the interplay of course components and specific student learning outcomes. We believe this example can serve as a reference for others working to integrate senior design and community-engaged engineering design, to support student learning outcomes as well as positive community partnerships and impact.