Enhancing Capstone Design Courses Through Graduate Student Mentoring and Leadership Development (original) (raw)

seniordesign.engr.uidaho.edu

Graduate education is highly focused on the development of technical and analytical skills, but typically provides minimal experience in team formation and interpersonal growth. To assure a more balanced graduate school experience, Idaho Engineering Works (IEW) at the University of Idaho is formed of a diverse group of graduate students whose purpose is to develop an environment that fosters professional as well as technical excellence. This paper analyzes IEW actions taken each year to form a well-trained, collaborative, and highly-reflective cohort of graduate students that support design education. This team is developed through directed study courses, team projects, personal reflections and monumental technical and interpersonal challenges. Over the course of the last ten years, the IEW has been successful in delivering hardware that exceeds expectations of industry customers, shortening time frames required for large-scale design projects, enriching senior design mentoring, and expanding the number of members. Each academic year produces a unique engineering leadership experience that has lifetime impact for its members and a legacy of improved infrastructure for design education. In this paper, the teamwork model of Larson and LaFasto is used to reflect on the people, strategy, and operations that form the IEW. This analysis is useful in revealing why IEW has been successful and how it might evolve to become an even more formidable force for design education at the University of Idaho.

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