Senior Design in the Washkewicz College of Engineering is our students’ capstone design experience. Student teams utilize their combined learning, experience, and ingenuity to solve challenging real-world design initiatives. Industrial and external institutional involvement is the key to the success of our senior design program. More importantly, it is the key to the ultimate success of our graduates in tomorrow’s engineering workforce. For more information on how to get involved as a project sponsor, please email Dr. Michael Adams, Director of Senior Design, at m.l.adams43@csuohio.edu.

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 3 to 4 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 Dinner

The Senior Design Capstone Course typically concludes with the annual Senior Design Symposium and Awards Dinner. 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.