International Civil Engineering Capstone Projects-Benefits, Challenges and Lessons Learned

摘要

For the past 27 years the capstone program in the College of Science and Engineering at Seattle University has required all engineering students to complete a nine month long, team based, externally sponsored capstone design project. The Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering has completed nearly 150 projects since the program's inception. In the past decade eight of these projects have been for clients outside the United States of America focused primarily on infrastructure improvement in developing communities. This paper first provides an extensive literature review of international capstone projects completed at other US universities and then describes the international capstone projects completed at Seattle University. Details related to project recruitment, relations with partner organizations, and cultural exchange experiences are provided. Some of the benefits and challenges encountered by the teams reinforce what is reported in the literature, namely, the importance of site visits, dependable local clients in the partnering country, and awareness of local codes, material and construction practices. Assessment results from an alumni survey showed that the participants found the international project experience to be valuable in their professional engineering practice. However, they valued the professional skills they acquired through the capstone project more than the international experience itself.