We discuss the factors that contributed to this growth, including industry-friendly intellectual property and non-disclosure agreements, a low-cost sponsorship model, a multidisciplinary capstone design section that satisfied the ABET requirements among all participating departments, and student interest in making a significant and immediate impact on their industry-sponsored project. As a result, the number of capstone design projects sponsored by “real” entrepreneurs and start-ups has increased eight-fold over the past five years: from 5 projects in 2007/08 to over 40 projects in 2011/12. In fact, the more interdisciplinary the program became, the better we could meet their needs, which often required input from 3 or more engineering disciplines as well as non-engineering disciplines.
At the same time that we improved our ability to work across disciplinary boundaries, many entrepreneurs and start-up firms became aware of our capstone design program, and we found ourselves working with more and more of them on projects involving concept development and prototyping. Now more than 70% of the capstone design teams involve students from two or more disciplines, with some teams consisting of 4–5 different engineering majors. First 3, then 4, 5, 8, and now 12 engineering majors regularly collaborate in what has become the largest industry-supported and college-wide capstone design program in the nation. While the Learning Factory began like many other capstone design programs, a new college-wide capstone model emerged over the past five years to enable interdisciplinary design teams across multiple departments. Journal of Verification, Validation and Uncertainty Quantificationįounded in 1995, the mission of the Learning Factory at the Pennsylvania State University has been to integrate real-world, hands-on design/build experience into the engineering classroom through industry-sponsored capstone design projects.Journal of Thermal Science and Engineering Applications.Journal of Offshore Mechanics and Arctic Engineering.Journal of Nuclear Engineering and Radiation Science.Journal of Nondestructive Evaluation, Diagnostics and Prognostics of Engineering Systems.Journal of Nanotechnology in Engineering and Medicine.Journal of Micro and Nano-Manufacturing.Journal of Manufacturing Science and Engineering.Journal of Engineering Materials and Technology.Journal of Engineering for Sustainable Buildings and Cities.Journal of Engineering for Gas Turbines and Power.Journal of Engineering and Science in Medical Diagnostics and Therapy.Journal of Electrochemical Energy Conversion and Storage.Journal of Dynamic Systems, Measurement, and Control.Journal of Computing and Information Science in Engineering.Journal of Computational and Nonlinear Dynamics.Journal of Autonomous Vehicles and Systems.
ASME Letters in Dynamic Systems and Control.ASCE-ASME Journal of Risk and Uncertainty in Engineering Systems, Part B: Mechanical Engineering.
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