[School]Thoughts on Senior Design

Patrick Beseda — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 04:51:53 +0000

Seniors in engineering at Colorado School of Mines complete, for a graduation requirement, a “capstone” course called Senior Design. It’s an engineering design course in which students undertake a “real life” problem with a “client” who present them with said problem. Students work in “interdisciplinary teams” in order to arrive at a “real, live solution” to the problem they are presented with. There are certain requirements the team must meet, including reports, presentations, client meetings etc. At the end of the two semester course sequence, is a Senior Design Fair in which students present their “solutions” or “designs” to other teams, professors, clients, and the general public.
As a junior in engineering at Colorado School of Mines, I feel like the entire program sounds like a waste of 9 months of my time. I’ve heard both good and bad reviews of the course from both quality and poor students. Anyone in engineering at Mines will know what I mean when they hear the acronym EPICS (Engineering something something Course Sequence). EPICS, at CSM, is a well known and universally disliked duo of classes designed to teach students “how engineering works in real life.” Well, either every engineer ever hates their job (somebody should investigate that possibility) or EPICS is, like I feel about Senior Design (SD), a giant waste of time.
Anyway, as a junior in engineering at Colorado School of Mines, in the Civil Engineering department, I have a few options:

One: Suck it up, register for the course, get on a team, see what happens.

This plan of action has two possible outcomes:
One: It sucks.
Two: It’s OK.

Two: Steel Bridge Competition. The ASCE sponsored university competition. Run by the Civil Eng. department, and student chapter of ASCE. Can take the place of SD graduation requirement.

This plan of action also has a few possible outcomes, as I’ve heard mixed reviews on that course as well (anonymously of course).
One: It sucks.
Two: It’s OK.
Three: It’s awesome, because we win.

The third option, which I’m not really certain of, but would like to know more about, is an independent study option. From what I understand, the student, under guidance of a mentor works on a project of his/her interest, working towards a final design solution or furthering of the field of study. This seems similar to a thesis program at the graduate level.

So, if I’m correct in this, this option has approximately one possible outcome.

One: It’s awesome, because it’s designed that way, by the student.

(Technically, there is a fourth option, which would be not take a SD class and not graduate, but that doesn’t really seem appealing.)

So the first two options are toss ups, the third is a definite (if it exists). Sounds good to me, and sign me up. And that leaves me with finding a mentor, not to mention a topic of interest, or a problem to solve. I’d like to work on this over the summer, so it will be in full swing for when I start the course in August, so I’d need to come up with this idea, find a professor to support me, and get it approved before May. In the off chance that you’re reading this, this is me asking for suggestions, advice or whatever. If you know anyone at Mines working on something I might be remotely interested in, let me know, by all means. I’m a Civil student interested in architecture and structural design (not geotechnical). Call me, I’ll do their research for free, I’ll work on the stuff they don’t want to. Seriously.

Patrick Beseda » CSM

[School]Thoughts on Senior Design