A Hands-On Multidisciplinary Design Course for Chemical Engineering Students

Team-based design projects have seen an increased place in the chemical engineering curriculum, especially with the advent of the new criteria set forth by the Accreditation Board of Engineering and Technology. However, even with these efforts, two areas that are in need of more attention for chemical engineers are hands-on and multidisciplinary projects. Because of this, a new elective chemical engineering course at Michigan Technological University has been developed, CM4900: Interdisciplinary Design, to fulfill these needs for students as well as for students in other disciplines. In this paper there will be a description of course goals, the course structure chosen to achieve these goals, results from the first semester of this course (taught in the fall 2000 semester), and plans for improving this course in future semesters