2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Academic Practice/Design Intervention

Engineering careers have become increasingly collaborative and multidisciplinary. To better prepare students for this climate, the Engineering School faculty and staff at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art have undertaken an initiative to improve interdisciplinary collaboration in senior capstone design projects. Interdisciplinary projects provide opportunities for students to collaborate across disciplines on complex problems and strengthen ties between departments and faculty. We have endeavored to maintain the independence of departmental capstone courses while still encouraging and facilitating interdisciplinary collaboration. We formalized the advising and assessment structure between departments and adjusted the course schedule to have all departments’ capstone courses meet at the same time each week to allow common workshops, presentations, and assessments. Over the last three years, 84 students (25% of total students) on 23 teams have participated directly in such interdisciplinary projects, with various degrees of collaboration. All engineering seniors, regardless of whether they are on an interdisciplinary team, participate in team formation exercises, unified workshop sessions, and an “Interdisciplinary Capstone Showcase” poster or oral presentation in the fall and the spring. In an end-of-the-year survey, a vast majority of students stated that they thought it was “important” or “very important” for future students to have the option of participating in an interdisciplinary project. Additionally, a majority of students on interdisciplinary teams indicated that this participation helped their learning and contributed to the success of their projects. These results are supported by student survey responses, student assessments of learning gains and teamwork evaluations.