Design Projects Concurrent with Capstone Design

Nearly all Mechanical Engineering programs have a capstone design experience. In many curricula, there is a classroom component that complements the capstone course. This paper presents a novel approach to that "complementary" class one in which students are asked to complete two design projects concurrently with ongoing work on their capstone proj ect. Some context must be provided in order to understand the motivation for this approach. First, at a small private Midwest university, the capstone projects are two -semester projects. In addition, each student group works on a different project. Some of those projects are composed of only mechanical engineering students, but the majority of groups include students from another department.