2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Architectural Engineering (AE) programs are poised to be leaders in educating future engineers on best practices and leading industry trends. To the AEC industry’s leading providers of critical thinkers, creative solution makers and future leaders, AE programs adopt a myriad of teaching strategies. The core of AE programs revolve around providing a realistic design and construction experience for students that simulates industry, with senior capstone projects commonly being the location for such an experience. Up to now, much has been researched on capstone delivery, but often excluded in this research are AE programs due to the small cohort size, as say compared to mechanical engineering.

This paper is the third in a series of AE program benchmarking, where the initial paper looked at general formulations, delivery, and project utilization, duration and location, and assignment formulation. The second paper in the series examined mentoring models, facilities, industry support, and project criteria. The presented work in this paper extends the topics covered in the first two papers by looking at grading mechanics in more details, technical studies within different AE disciplines, how system integration and architecture are handled, the division of work between students, and lastly where AE programs see senior capstone courses trending over the next decade. Results presented here can be utilized by other AE programs to benchmark their practices while also looking for good ideas / strategies to possibly adopt in their program.