Engineering
industries are calling for graduates that have a breadth of skills including
design and analysis skills, teaming skills and “soft skills” (i.e., project
management, concept value analysis, communication, cross-disciplinary
understanding, etc.). Furthermore, concepts that are traditionally taught in
isolated packets are difficult to synthesize and apply to the more holistic
problems engineers typically face. Northern Arizona University’s College of
Engineering and Technology is implementing an innovative, four-year, sequence
of classes called the Path to Synthesis. The sophomore and junior courses in
the Path to Synthesis program are team-taught industry simulations which use
collaborative product design to not only develop design skills, teamwork
skills, and soft engineering skills, but to also encourage the use of state of
the art design methods and professional-quality software tools. These two
classes are each divided into divisions consisting of 8 to 9 students from the
engineering disciplines of Civil/Environmental, Electrical, Mechanical and
Computer Science. Each division is managed by a faculty member who role plays
as a division manager. This paper describes the piloted junior level Path to
Synthesis course, called EGR 386 Engineering Design III The Methods, which is
vertically integrated with the sophomore course, EGR 286 Engineering Design II
The Process. The junior course emphasizes analytical engineering skills along
with sophisticated project management techniques including subcontract
management. Written and oral communication skills and topics on professionalism
and ethics are also addressed. Greater emphasis is placed on rigorous planning
and scheduling, cost estimation and economics, and coordination of efforts
between: the Design II and III teams, the Design III students and the customer,
and the Design III students and students from the Computer Visualization and
Imaging (CVI) program at Cogswell College in Sunnyvale, CA. The Fall ‘95 project
was the design of a materials recycling facility (MRF) for comingled curbside
household recyclable garbage. The students designed and constructed feasibility
models of fully automated and computer controlled mechanisms that sort items
such as aluminum, steel, various grades of paper, cardboard, plastics types,
and contaminants. A local site was selected and a task force of the sophomore
and junior Civil and Environmental engineering students worked concurrently on
site development and the MRF design. The junior Civil and Environmental
students subcontracted with students from Cogswell College to produce computer
animated renderings of the site before and after site construction.