Saint Francis University

What value does a real-world project bring to students?

Students on a real-world project are faced with the kinds of challenges that they are likely to encounter on the projects they will work on for the rest of their professional careers. We are a small school, and our students know our faculty very well. Real-word projects give students opportunities to work closely with other professionals, learning many different styles and strategies for practicing engineering. The interpersonal skills that are developed by working on a project that will make a real difference to someone are unmatched.

How do you decide which projects to work on?

We have relationships with several companies and non-profit organizations in our area. They reach out to us when they have a “student–sized” project, or we reach out to them if there is an idea that we think they might like to explore with us.

How did this project prepare students for professional practice?

The project for which we received the award was a very practical problem of waste management. There is no single “right way” to handle the waste, and so our students had to consider multiple diverse alternatives before narrowing down the options to the best one for their client.

What advice do you have for other programs wanting to add similar collaborative projects to their curriculum?

Talk to engineers in your community about the work that they do. Visit their businesses; listen to them about ideas that keep getting pushed to their “back burner.” Often, they are very willing to support students by working with them on projects. Keep an open mind about the possibilities.

What did you like best about participating in this project?

Within this project, I enjoyed having some degree of freedom in choosing research methods, design specifications, and making the project our own. Although we were given rubrics to guide deliverables, we were able to present and make decisions for the project ourselves. I feel as though independence throughout the design process allowed the outcome of the project to be more thoughtful and meaningful.

What did you learn?

I learned that sometimes in the engineering design process a clear solution can’t be found without conducting research for multiple solutions. I went into the project thinking that there would be a clear path of which solution would prove to be most beneficial or suitable for our client, which was not the case. Data collection had to be conducted for all three disposal alternatives, and even after data analysis, it was not completely clear which alternative was most fit.

I had to learn that even though we were not moving forward with options which we put effort into, that not moving forward with these options didn’t mean they “failed” necessarily, but rather we had to learn more about the materials and processes which our client wanted. Testing different methods and collecting data with different uses in mind still aided in selecting the most suitable option.

How did the participation of professional engineers improve the experience?

Having professional engineers outline and guide within the decision-making process for which designs met constraints and criteria after preliminary data collection helped immensely. After data collection and evaluation, it was difficult to quantify what solution would best suit American Eagle’s interests. Having aid in this decision-making process from professional engineers who had experience defining constraints and criteria in projects proved to be extremely beneficial.