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At the heart of the core curriculum is a series of eight design courses, one each semester, that we refer to as the Design Spine. The Design Spine courses are the major vehicle for developing a set of competencies to meet our educational goals in areas such as creative thinking, problem solving, teamwork, economics of engineering, project management, communication skills, ethics, and environmental awareness. They are also linked to the engineering science courses taken concurrently each semester. This is done so that experiments and design projects provide a tangible context for the engineering science lecture materials and thus are an aid to learning.
The first five core design courses are taken by all students and are taught by adjunct engineers who bring the benefit of their industry-based design experience into the classroom. The last three courses are taken within their discipline - a junior course followed by a 2-semester capstone senior project. | Revisions to the Design Spine | |
A curriculum revision in Fall 2005 provided the opportunity to build upon the use of programming and sensors in Engineering Design I in the context of a robot project. And introduced graphical programming through LabVIEW which impresses upon students the ubiquitous nature of sensors and systems for monitoring and control across the engineering spectrum. | The Importance of Systems Thinking & Total Design | |
The design sequence was also revised to introduce concepts associated with systems thinking from the start of the design sequence. Systems thinking recognizes that engineers are called upon to practice in a global socio-economic environment increasingly dominated by engineering systems and the design of engineering systems.
Engineering curricula, with their focus on the disciplinary contributions to design, encourage a mindset in which students seek technical solutions often rooted in a specific engineering discipline with little regard for the context in which their product, system, or service may be deployed, the societal or business need it may fulfill or even its relations to all the other engineering, business or ‘environmental’ domains that can contribute to success. To address the issues of “partial design,” the comprehensive design approach known as "Total Design", is being implemented. “Total Design” is the systematic activity necessary from the identification of a market/user need, to the selling of a successful product/process/service to satisfy that need – an activity that encompasses product, process, people and organization. In fact, "Total Design" encompasses approaches, methods and tools of system design and systems engineering. The major aim of systems engineering is to develop an operational model of the system for all phases of the life cycle, the model is then used as a basis for detail design.
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Wednesday April 25, 2007
11:30-2:30
Schaefer Arena
Stevens Insitute of Technology
Hoboken, New Jersey Keith Sheppard
Professor & Associate Dean of Engineering, Schaefer School of Engineering and Science
Edwin A. Stevens Hall
Room 216
Phone: 201.216.5260
Fax: 201.216.8372
ksheppar@stevens.edu Find out more about the Technogenesis Senior Design Prize A Guide for Inventors and Entrepreneurs
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