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Students are divided into teams of three to six students from several engineering departments. Each team works on a project from September to May, proceeding through requirements definition, conceptual design, detailed design and analysis, and finally to implementation and testing.
An industry mentor meets weekly with each team and each team writes a monthly status report and creates a project website with all of their documentation. Teams also conduct design reviews and write reports at key milestones. During the course of the projects, teams have access to a wide array of resources at UA including electrical benches, a machine shop, wind tunnels, computer simulation and modeling software, materials testing equipment, rapid prototyping, optical labs, and a wide range of expertise provided by UA's faculty members.
While giving students experience with a real-world design project that involves budgets and deadlines, the projects also benefit industry sponsors by providing them with custom-designed engineering solutions and valuable experimental data.
Sponsor costs are deliberately kept low: $5000 per project, $2000 of which goes to the student budget and $3000 goes to support the interdisciplinary design program and administrative costs. For projects requiring additional funding for materials, students will make a proposal to the sponsor in December with and without cost constraints. Sponsors have the option of providing additional funding to the team.
Past sponsors have included some of the most innovative companies in the U.S. such as Arete Associates, Axometrics, BAE Systems, Edmund Optics, NASA, Raytheon Missile Systems, Siskiyou, and SunRISE Solar Engineering.
The University of Arizona allows intellectual property developed by the student teams to be assigned to the sponsoring company. UA provides the necessary paperwork and ensures that students understand that participation in these projects is dependent upon their willingness to assign IP to a sponsoring company.
UA's College of Engineering
For more information about Engineering Design Day, including photos and previous winners, please visit the College of Engineering's Web site at http://www.engr.arizona.edu/students/designday/index.html
For More Information
Please contact Dr. Carl Maes, College of Optical Sciences Associate Dean for Academic Programs, by telephone at 520-626-8837 or by email at carl.maes@optics.arizona.edu
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Optical
Sciences bachelor's degree students take two semesters of Senior
Capstone in which they work in cross-disciplinary teams to solve
industry-sponsored real-world design problems. Students must take the two Senior Capstone classes in consecutive
semesters; they begin their project in the Fall semester and complete it
the following Spring. Each May, just before classes end, students
showcase their projects at UA's Engineering Design Day. The event
is open to the public and Industrial Affiliates are welcome to attend.
