Senior-freshman collaboration in a capstone design course

An innovative capstone design course entitled Design of Fluid Thermal Systems, involves groups of seniors working on various semester-long design projects. Once projects are awarded, freshmen enrolled in the Introduction to Mechanical Engineering course are assigned to work with the senior design teams. The senior teams function like small consulting companies that employ co-operative education students; e.g., the freshmen. One of the objectives of building this collaboration is a desire to increase the retention rate of the freshmen by involving them with the seniors in some interesting design work. Additionally, the seniors benefit by gaining team leadership experience, and by developing the ability to communicate their ideas to a non-technical audience as their design work progresses. This project began in Fall 2001, and at the conclusion of that semester, an assessment instrument was administered to the seniors to ascertain their opinion of the experience. After reviewing the comments made by the seniors, improvements were made to this project, and these improvements were implemented in Fall 2002. At the end of the Fall 2002 semester an assessment was made and the following conclusions were drawn: The seniors and the freshmen all believed that the interaction was a rewarding experience. The seniors felt that their freshmen co-ops made useful contributions to the overall design effort. The freshmen also believed this was so. The seniors learned to appreciate the management problems encountered while managing co-workers with limited technical expertise. The seniors and the freshmen both recommended that the program be continued in the future