Senior Year Emphasis

Individual Senior Design Projects

• Three individual design problems "majors" completed during year, building upon the previous one, and emphasizing :
  • troubleshooting or debottlenecking
  • retro-fitting
  • grass-roots design
• Each major is rigorously defended orally before at least two faculty (tantamount to three one-hour, individual tutorials)

Group Year-Long Senior Design Project

• Project led by a student Chief Engineer (history dates back to 1941)
• Other students serve as Section Leaders, Group Leaders
• Faculty play roles (customer, vice-president, engineers, marketing consultants)
• First semester is for market survey and feasibility study
• Second semester is for full design defended before entire Department (and College) community
• Projects are often non-traditional, such as tank farm design, production of gold from ore, product designs (fuel cells, magnetic refrigerator, technology to eradicate Zebra Mussels)
• Some students participate in Chemical Engineering Car Competition (separate design group)

Laboratory Experience

• Students design own experimental procedures
• Oral and written reports required for each of six experiments
• Students learn about experiments they did not perform by listening and evaluating other student oral presentations