2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education define information literacy as a set of basic skills for lifelong learning, in all academic disciplines, all learning environments, and all levels of education (ACRL, 2015). Several studies suggest that Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) majors in higher education must also prepare students to access, explore and incorporate concepts and information from other disciplines as part of senior design capstone courses.

Based on interviews with faculty across academic departments at the College of Engineering in a public university (IRB study number: 2024E0519, qualifying exempt category: #2b), this study describes their need to incorporate relevant information resources and data analysis tools to foster the students’ learning experiences and professional skills while conducting interdisciplinary capstone projects. It also describes faculty perceptions regarding the nature of successful capstone projects sponsored by industry, and a few suggestions to improve the overall assessment process of the capstone projects they supervise.

These results are relevant to guide the design and selection of library resources that enhance access and discovery across disciplines, including patents, engineering standards, project management and technical writing best practices; biomedical, bioengineering and health information; business information related to entrepreneurship, company, industry and market research.

Being interdisciplinary by design means “intentionally building services, spaces and networks to foster creativity, collaborations and integration at every level” (Mathews, 2025), and subject librarians must facilitate access to resources across disciplines and academic departments to help engineering students enrolled in capstone courses to move seamlessly from brainstorming to market research, and from preliminary designs to prototyping, by promoting access to information resources as interdisciplinary as the challenges and perspectives they strive to support.