Engineering Management Content For A Senior Design Course In Mechanical Engineering

P. B. Ravikumar Professor, Mechanical & Industrial Engineering Department University of Wisconsin, Platteville, WI ABSTRACT Mechanical Engineering students at UW-Platteville take the Senior Design Project Course in the final semester of their undergraduate program. Most of the team projects for the course, often all projects, are provided by industry. The course is designed with the primary objective of providing students an experience that serves as a transition from classic engineering education to engineering practice in the real world. To meet this objective, both design and related content essential to the practice of engineering need to be strategically implemented in the course. Related content includes several engineering management topics such as Leadership, Project Management, Time Management, Effective Communication, Human Resources / Relations, and Engineering Ethics. It is a challenge to accommodate such topics due to time constraints or due to the conventional practice of not covering them to a certain degree of rigor. This paper provides a brief overview of the objectives of the Senior Design Project course. The need to relate engineering design and management in such a course is then addressed followed by an in-depth look at the engineering management content that is covered. Teaching / learning strategies adopted in covering the content and assessment strategies used in evaluating the effectiveness are addressed. Non-engineering management faculty planning to introduce engineering management in some of their courses may find some of the material in this paper useful. Faculty who focus on engineering management may find the paper providing some insight and hence ideas of their own as to how engineering faculty approach or must approach the subject of engineering management