Linking Freshmen and Senior Engineering Design Teams: Engaging Early Academic Career Students in Engineering Design

Abstract

<abstract> <bold>Abstract.</bold> Curriculum for freshmen and transfer engineering students has typically focused on engineering fundamentals such as calculus, physics, chemistry, and biology. Little introduction is provided on the engineering design process, except potentially in a one-credit hour introductory seminar course. Previous research has indicated the importance of teaching the engineering design process to freshmen. Engineering programs have attempted to teach engineering design concepts in freshmen-level courses, but these strategies are typically based on simple yet challenging projects or individual laboratory exercises. Freshmen and transfer students are rarely challenged to engage their creativity in solving real-world problems with real-world clients. In Biosystems Engineering at Oklahoma State University (OSU), the senior-design course is a two-semester sequence (BAE 4012/BAE 4023). Students work on real-world projects provided by industry clients. The course includes idea generation, patent and standard research, and selection of a final design from alternative solutions in the fall semester. Freshmen and transfer students in Biosystems Engineering at OSU enroll in an Introduction to Biosystems Engineering course (BAE 1012). Historically, students were divided into teams and worked on a data analysis project with a faculty member in the department. This data analysis project was typically research-oriented rather than emphasizing engineering design. Therefore, the engineering design process was typically discussed during course lectures but not explicitly applied. This research hypothesized that freshmen/transfer (BAE 1012) and senior design (BAE 4012) engineering teams can be linked through real-world senior-design capstone projects to more effectively introduce engineering design principles to the early academic career students. Ideally, freshmen and transfer engineering students (i.e., subcontractor) would design a small portion of the senior design project as defined by and supervised by the senior design teams (i.e., contractor). For the past two years, three metric goals were defined and assessed through BAE 1012 student performance on poster presentations and surveys of both the BAE 1012 and BAE 4012 students. As a result of linking freshmen/transfer and senior engineering teams, early academic career engineering students are able to effectively decide on whether engineering, and more specifically Biosystems Engineering, is an appropriate career path. After having institutionalized the linkage, seniors were more likely to identify appropriate BAE 1012 projects from their larger senior design projects and viewed the mentoring as beneficial for both sets of students.