Published: April 11, 2020
Student and judges speaking inside CU Boulder indoor stadium

Senior Design serves to transition 256 engineering students to entry-level engineers through their capstone projects

Gabe Rodriguez | Photos Courtesy of E.B. Bollondonk & Branden Adems

The transition from engineering school to industry can be quite challenging for graduating students. This is due mainly to the heightened sense of accountability that attends managing work on long term projects. Each year, the Mechanical Engineering (ME) Department hopes to facilitate the transition from student to engineer through its Senior Design course, where students pursue a project lasting the entire school year. For many incoming seniors, it’s their first professional project experience where they must address the needs and demands of multiple stakeholders and engineer a working prototype.

“Senior Design bridges the gap between being a student and becoming a professional engineer,” ME Graduate Student Danny Straub said. “It taught me how to behave professionally, communicate clearly, and gave me an idea of the expectations of an engineer in industry.” Straub took Senior Design last year and is now a program assistant (PA) for the course, where he’s been able to reflect on his experience and growth. While Straub said he felt prepared for Senior Design technically, he had never had to actively communicate with clients to decide the project scope and specifications.

“I soon learned that Senior Design was unlike any other class in that it is completely dependent on your project,” Straub said, “and it is up to the team to decide how to spend the time and money. Senior Design taught me how to link my technical background to using this technical knowledge to make practical decisions.”

Incoming ME seniors have the option to take either the industry or entrepreneurial sections, where students work directly with company sponsors or come up with their own entrepreneurial projects, respectively. In the industry section, teams are first formed based on project interests, personality types, and skill sets, whereafter they must apply to seven of the available projects. This year, there are 33 unique projects within the industry section, spanning multiple engineering fields and disciplines. In the entrepreneurial section, students pitch project ideas which are then narrowed down based on the class’s interest. Both sections involve rapid turnarounds where teams must quickly determine the project’s scope and specifications to fulfill throughout the school year, while also establishing effective internal team dynamics.

“I was definitely nervous about working with a team I hadn’t even met yet on a project I knew nothing about, but I am very glad that my team is passionate about our project and motivated to fabricate something amazing,” ME Senior Branden Adams said. Adams is currently working as a Logistics Manager and Design Engineer for a Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) sponsored project, where he and his team were tasked with designing and fabricating a prototype of a mechanism that will transport samples of ce collected from the surface of an icy world. It will then deliver these samples to on-board science instruments and potentially indicate whether those worlds could harbor life.

The first semester of Senior Design is generally devoted to the design and conceptualization process, whereas the second semester involves the fabrication and implementation of their design concepts. Each team starts with a $2,000 budget and must present several design reviews, where they justify their design decisions through engineering analysis, research, and budget optimizations. At the end of the semester, most teams present a Manufacturing Review, Budget Review, and Test Plan Review in preparation for the following semester to ensure their prototype is realizable in all three aspects.

“Some unique challenges associated with Senior Design are definitely the level of autonomy and personal responsibility required in order to meet deadlines,” Adams said. “Each student on the team has a responsibility to do their part on time then check to see if someone else needs help. I believe this to be a crucial factor to ensuring each team member’s personal goals are met in addition to supporting the overall success of the project.”

Senior Design Professors Daria KotysSchwartz, Julie Steinbrenner, and Dan Riffell continuously emphasize that Senior Design teams cannot afford to leave underperforming team members behind, which is often the case in other group projects outside the course. In Senior Design, it’s imperative that each team is actively involved because each member is assigned up to two leadership positions, including Project Manager, Logistics Manager, Financial Manager, CAD Engineer, Manufacturing Engineering, Systems Engineer, and Test Engineer. Straub reflected the importance of ensuring all team members are communicating throughout this design process.

“In a semester-long class, a team may experience conflict, but the semester usually ends before the conflict starts to affect the project,” Straub said. “In Senior Design, it is [important] to work through team conflict and resolve it to ensure the progress of the project is not compromised. The project scopes in Senior Design [also] do not always align with the team’s skillset, and it is up to the team to learn new skills to complete the project on time.” Straub also discussed how the Senior Design professors continuously work with teams on team dynamics by providing coaching advice throughout the school year.

Both Straub and Adams discussed how Senior Design presents a less direct approach to solving engineering problems; that is, teams must determine both the problems and solutions of their projects. Engineering students are often accustomed to a more formulaic approach for problem solving, because they have the necessary resources available to find a single correct answer for the instructions given. However, this approach isn’t nearly as useful in the workforce or in Senior Design.

“Traditionally classes I have taken up until this point have had very structured assignments,” Adams said. “Senior Design presents students with guidelines and expectations without a linear path to success. I find this to be more representative of working on an engineering team to use creative ideas and concepts to meet and exceed the goals of a project.”

Straub agreed to this testament and added that there are no right answers in an industry project. Rather, it’s up to the team to decide what the best answer is. “There are many resources given to the students,” Straub said, “but in the end they are required to learn what is needed to be learned and apply that knowledge to the project. Sometimes the problems that arise do not have an immediate solution and the team needs to adapt and rethink the design while balancing time and budget constraints.”

Adams, though still in the first semester of the course, said he has already learned a lot through Senior Design. He said he’s already improved upon his own level of organization and accountability and how to communicate and collaborate with other engineers. Straub, as a PA of the course, discussed how he also learned a lot through the course. And although he recognizes he still has plenty of room for improvement, he is still able to offer invaluable advice to students in Senior Design. He said this serves as proof of how much students can learn in this nine-month endeavor.

“I feel a lot more confident and prepared for a nine-month project than I did going into Senior Design. It is night and day different,” Straub said. “I know what questions need to be asked and answered in the design process, how to solidify the project scope, how to manage scope creep, and what is expected [in a professional setting]. After completing Senior Design, I now feel I am an engineer more than a student, and I know what that role means and what responsibilities it entails.”