A Multidisciplinary, Hands-on, Freshman Engineering Team Design Project and Competition

摘要

To introduce engineering students to multidisciplinary team work and the principles of engineering design early in their educational careers, a freshman design project and competition was developed. This project and competition required skills typically associated with the four engineering departments (the Departments of Chemical Engineering, Civil and Environmental Engineering. Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Mechanical Engineering) in the College of Engineering at Villanova University. Students were required to build a model car with proper gearing, construct a bridge, and supply power through an electrochemical reaction to complete a specific set of tasks. Teams could only use the limited materials supplied to them. The competition involved an aesthetics contest, a race (including a hill), a load pull, and a load test of the bridge. The project emphasized leaching the freshmen engineering students about team work, open-ended design issues, long-term deadlines, creativeness, the multidisciplinary nature of engineering, as well as the fun of engineering.