History

The Senior Design Capstone Course (Senior Design) is the culmination of students’ engineering education at Cleveland State University’s Washkewicz College of Engineering. The two-semester (Fall, Spring) long course gives students the opportunity to incorporate engineering principles learned throughout their academic careers into one final project.

Students, with the guidance of a faculty advisor and company liaison, work in teams of three to four to develop solutions to a wide variety of engineering problems. The majority of the projects are real-world problems provided by corporate sponsors. Student teams are required to develop a comprehensive project plan with a problem description, design alternatives, budget, equipment requirements, time schedule, final design, and in most cases, a prototype. Each student is expected to spend up to 200 hours working on the project (up to 1,000 person-hours per team), corresponding to a five-credit-hour course.

Senior Design Symposium and Awards

The Senior Design Capstone Course typically concludes with the annual Senior Design Symposium and Awards program. The event features a poster presentation, a keynote presentation from an engineering industry leader and concludes with the awarding of cash prizes to the top three Senior Design Projects.