Amazing what you can build in your fourth year...
Imagine designing a product that proves useful to a major corporation. George Fox engineering students get that very privilege as part of the university's capstone Senior Design I & II class, a two-semester, four-credit-hour course taken in the fall and spring of senior year.
The class includes both the senior electrical and mechanical students and is co-taught by two engineering faculty - one from each of the two concentrations. Every effort is made to ensure a realistic industry design project. The students work directly with the sponsoring company to identify design specifications, perform the investigation, and ultimately present their results and final design.
Each year since 2004, the university has worked with the Xerox Corporation of Wilsonville, Ore., to create products that have real-world application for the company. In 2006, students built a fixture that allows Xerox to test the effects that load, velocity, and temperature have on its various transfix roller and drum materials.
In 2005, students created an automated ink durability tester for Xerox that provided a simple and consistent method of testing and improving ink durability or scratch resistance. George Fox's partnership with Xerox began in 2004 with a drop-on-drum vision system that resulted in a more efficient, effective way of capturing images of ink droplets on its printer drums.
This is truly a capstone course that demands integration of knowledge from all areas of the curriculum. The projects have both an electrical and mechanical aspect and require the students to not only provide a design but a working prototype as well. The projects include numerous issues and considerations such as economic, environmental, sustainability, manufacturability, ethical, health and safety, social, and political. Students tend to be surprised at all the "non-technical" issues that must be confronted and addressed.
The senior engineering students also are required to take the Senior Seminar course during the same semester as Senior Design I. This seminar course presents many diverse topics, including subject matter that will help the students successfully complete the design project. Some of the Senior Seminar topics relevant to the Senior Design course are project management, leadership and supervision, presentation skills and persuasive reasoning, statistics, and economics.
The students are given significant freedom; however, the engineering faculty and industry engineers are available for guidance. Students are asked to make regular presentations to the sponsoring company, the faculty, and each other.
The project progress is assessed throughout the two semesters and input is given. Both the teams and individual students are assessed. This course serves as an excellent place to measure the overall learning and progress of our students as well as the success of the engineering program. Final oral presentations and demonstration of successful prototype functionality are given at the annual Design Project Day and at the client's industrial site.
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