Senior Research and Design Project Preparation, Honors

Catalog description

Preliminary identification and planning for the senior year research and design project. ESC 409 Senior Research and Design Project Preparation, Honors (1) is the first of a three-part series of courses that constitute the Engineering Science honors capstone research and design project. Engineering Science students participate in projects in all engineering disciplines and employ design principles before, during, and after analysis, experimentation and/or simulation. The resulting designs of systems, components or processes are then tested and refined by changing material, geometric, stochastic or other parameters, as required. Students will spend the first few weeks of the course investigating various areas of research being conducted at the university. They will then interview key faculty and graduate students in several research groups and ultimately select one area to be the focus of their senior thesis research. After obtaining the agreement of a faculty member to supervise the thesis project, they will spend time familiarizing themselves with the people, equipment, materials, and software available in their selected research group as well as reading and summarizing key literature in preparation for conducting research. As an end product of this 1 credit course, students will develop a detailed set of project objectives and create a timeline for the year-long project. Class time will be spent exposing students to a variety of different research areas. In addition, time will be given for students to support each other through facilitated discussions to share their success stories as well as difficulties encountered in the process of identifying and selecting their research topics. Students will also be given the opportunity to present the preliminary details of their intended research topic. ESC 409 (1 credits) will be followed by ESC 410 (3 credits) where students will conduct their research, subsequently followed by ESC 411 (2 credits) where students will complete their research and prepare a written honors thesis. Through these combined 6 credits, students will integrate the scientific principles of research, design, and analysis and apply them to a particular field of engineering.