2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Successful Engineering Capstone Design Projects based on a collaboration between the US Army and an Electrical Engineering program with a focus on Cybersecurity

Presented at Design in Engineering Education Division (DEED) - Embedding Industry in Design Education

Cybersecurity is an area of growing concern, both for the defense sector and industry. Traditionally, computer science programs have an explicit component of cybersecurity, but engineering programs are less likely to include it in their curriculum. A multi-year collaboration between the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command (DEVCOM) Analysis Center (DAC) and our institution has promoted several changes in the program curriculum, established new research avenues, and enhanced the capstone design course. We have described the overall impact of the collaboration elsewhere. This paper focuses on the strategies used in the capstone design interventions.
Our electrical engineering capstone project courses, a sequence of two semesters, have been significantly enhanced through collaboration with DEVCOM. The students now design and create electronic systems with a heightened awareness of cybersecurity impacts, thanks to the new requirement. This activity is achieved through security awareness modules in the capstone courses for all students and the opportunity for at least one student team in each cohort to develop a project focused on cybersecurity involving hardware. The design requirements are based on an Army need, resulting in a product that DAC can utilize. The primary application has been the development of self-contained portable systems to train soldiers and civilians on cybersecurity using a cyberphysical system to pinpoint vulnerabilities, launch attacks, and neutralize attacks through various countermeasures.
In previous papers, we used a two-phased explanatory sequential mixed methods study using quantitative data and then explained the quantitative results with in-depth qualitative data. This paper focuses on the qualitative analysis of the impact of the capstone design based on student interviews conducted in the last phase of the capstone design.

Authors

Dr. Virgilio Ernesto Gonzalez http://orcid.org/https://0000-0003-1042-4811 University of Texas at El Paso [biography]

Virgilio Gonzalez, Associate Chair and Professor of Practice at the ECE department at The University of Texas at El Paso, and started his first appointment at UTEP in 2001. He focuses his research on communication technologies. He received the UT System Board of Regents Outstanding Teaching Award and is actively engaged in K-12 Engineering outreach.
Pilar Gonzalez University of Texas at El Paso [biography]

Ms. Pilar Gonzalez, a Doctoral Research Associate at the University of Texas System Louise Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (UT System LSAMP), is also a doctoral candidate in the Teaching, Learning, and Culture (TLC) Ph.D. program at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) in the STEM strand. Her research, which uniquely stems from her Hispanic background, focuses on the impact of a STEM degree on Hispanic social mobility. With over 15 years of teaching experience, from early childhood (EC) through undergraduate school, she comprehensively understands the field. She has been instrumental in implementing STEM in grade school and observing the influence of students being exposed to STEM at an early age.
Gonzalez's research focuses on STEM education, and she has contributed to the field through several presentations, where her work was published with the proceedings, such as at: Frontiers in Education (FIE, 2023, 2024, 2008), GradExpo (UTEP, 2024), Louis Stokes Midwest Regional Center of Excellence (LSMRCE, 2023, 2022), InSPIRE/UTEP Edge (2023), HACU Annual Conference on Hispanic Higher Education (2022), and Future African Space Explorers (FASESA, 2022), most recently.
Gonzalez holds a master's degree in STEM education from UTEP and is a member of ASEE, the Texas Computer Education Association (TCEA), IEEE, and ASCD. In addition to her academic work, she actively supports schools and teams participating in For Inspiration and Recognition for Science and Technology (FIRST), with a particular focus on those comprised of minority students. She also researched teacher preparation programs for bilingual education (BED) and English as a second language (ESL).
Dr. Rodrigo Romero University of Texas at El Paso
Dr. Oscar Antonio Perez University of Texas at El Paso [biography]

Mr. Oscar Perez received his PhD. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) with a special focus on control systems and data communications. He was Awarded the Woody Everett award from the American Society for engineering ed

Note

The full paper will be available to logged in and registered conference attendees once the conference starts on June 22, 2025, and to all visitors after the conference ends on June 25, 2025

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