2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Integration of Capstone Class and Student Competition Design Teams

Presented at Design in Engineering Education Division (DEED) - Team-Based and Experiential Learning

Many student teams, such as SAE Collegiate Design Series teams, ASME design project teams, and others, feature interesting and challenging projects. These projects are often open-ended and require use of material from multiple engineering classes and even disciplines, which suit them in many ways for capstone projects in senior design classes. In this paper, a team of faculty who have been involved with student teams and have taught capstone classes analyze the student experiences with capstones, and discuss the benefits of a capstone project focused on a student team. Data was gathered from students by use of a survey, which was sent to students in several different classes. Quantitative and qualitative analysis is carried out on the data, and it is found that students felt that they gained useful experiences from capstones focused on student teams.

Authors

Dr. Diane L Peters P.E. http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8177-8145 Kettering University [biography]

Dr. Peters is an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Kettering University.
Dr. Chinwe Tait Kettering University [biography]

Dr. Chinwe Tait is an Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Kettering University. She received her B.S. degree in Aerospace Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a minor in Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences. She then received her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering as well as a Certification in College Teaching from Michigan State University. Dr. Tait joined Kettering University in 2021 and has taught several electrical engineering courses, including the Senior Design Capstone.
Dr. Jennifer Melanie Bastiaan http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8208-994X Kettering University [biography]

Jennifer Bastiaan received her Ph.D. in Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering from the University of Waterloo. She is an Associate Professor in the Mechanical Engineering department at Kettering University, where she is focused on teaching and research in ground vehicle systems.
Dr. Mehrdad Zadeh [biography]

Dr. Zadeh is an associate professor and an advisor of AutoDrive Challengeâ„¢ competition at Kettering University, MI. From Sept. 2015 to January 2017, he served as a visiting associate professor at Johns Hopkins University, Laboratory for Computational Se

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