The goal of the 2014 Capstone Design Conference held in Columbus, OH was to build upon the success of three previous conferences (2007 and 2010 in Boulder, CO, and 2012 in Champaign, IL) and expand the community of educators, students, and industry members engaged in discussing, analyzing, and improving capstone design education. Sessions at the 2014 Capstone Design Conference were designed for vibrant sharing of ideas and experiences across the capstone community via interactive panel sessions, poster session socials, and hands-on workshops. This editorial discusses conference planning, structure, and feedback. Technical papers that follow in this issue document scholarship surrounding noteworthy capstone course innovations. Most of these began as four page peer-reviewed papers included in the conference proceedings

Beyerlein, Steven

Goldberg, Jay R.

Howe, Susannah

Palo, Scott

Rogge, Renee

Stanfill, R. Keith

English

epublications@Marquette

Marquette Universitye-Publications@MarquetteBiomedical Engineering Faculty Research andPublications Biomedical Engineering, Department of1-1-2015Guest Editorial: The 2014 Capstone DesignConferenceSteven BeyerleinUniversity of IdahoJay R. GoldbergMarquette University, jay.goldberg@marquette.eduSusannah HoweSmith CollegeScott PaloUniversity of ColoradoRenee RoggeRose-Hulman Institute of TechnologySee next page for additional authorsPublished version. International Journal of Engineering Education, Vol. 31, No. 6B (2015): 1723-1726.Permalink. © 2015 Tempus Publications. Used with permission.AuthorsSteven Beyerlein, Jay R. Goldberg, Susannah Howe, Scott Palo, Renee Rogge, and R. Keith StanfillThis article is available at e-Publications@Marquette: https://epublications.marquette.edu/bioengin_fac/445Guest EditorialThe 2014 Capstone Design ConferenceSTEVEN BEYERLEINDepartment of Mechanical Engineering, University of Idaho, 875 Perimeter Drive, Moscow ID 83844-0902, USA.E-mail: sbeyer@uidaho.eduJAY GOLDBERGDepartment of Biomedical Engineering, Marquette University, P.O. Box 1881, Milwaukee WI 53201-1881, USA.E-mail: jay.goldberg@mu.eduSUSANNAH HOWEPicker Engineering Program, Smith College, 151 Ford Hall, Northampton MA 01063, USA. E-mail: showe@smith.eduSCOTT PALODepartment of Aerospace Engineering Sciences, University of Colorado, 429 UCB, Boulder CO 80309, USA.E-mail: scott.palo@colorado.eduRENEE ROGGEDepartment of Biomedical Engineering, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, 5500 Wabash Avenue, Terre Haute, IN 47803, USA.E-mail: rogge@rose-hulman.eduR. KEITH STANFILLEngineering Innovation Institute, University of Florida, P.O. Box 116595, Gainesville, FL 32611-6595, USA. E-mail: stanﬁll@uﬂ.eduThe goal of the 2014 Capstone Design Conference held in Columbus, OH was to build upon the success of three previousconferences (2007 and 2010 in Boulder, CO, and 2012 in Champaign, IL) and expand the community of educators,students, and industry members engaged in discussing, analyzing, and improving capstone design education. Sessions atthe 2014 Capstone Design Conference were designed for vibrant sharing of ideas and experiences across the capstonecommunity via interactive panel sessions, poster session socials, and hands-on workshops. This editorial discussesconference planning, structure, and feedback.Technical papers that follow in this issue document scholarship surroundingnoteworthy capstone course innovations.Most of these beganas fourpagepeer-reviewedpapers included in the conferenceproceedings.Keywords: capstone design courses; design pedagogy; multidisciplinary projects; experiential learning1. IntroductionThe goal of the 2014 Capstone Design Conferencewas to continue to attract capstone design educa-tors, share best practices, and identify methods toimprove capstone design education. The conferencewas held June 2–4, 2014, in Columbus, OH, with atheme of multidisciplinarity and experiential learn-ing. Speciﬁc conference information, including thecomplete conference program and early versions ofmany papers appearing in this special issue, isavailable at the Capstone Conference website(www.capstoneconf.org). The papers in this specialissue represent a cross-section of best practices andtopics of interest to capstone design course stake-holders as well as design researchers.2. Conference Design/PlanningPlanning for the 2014 Capstone Design Conferencebegan formally at the endof the capstone conferencein 2012, with the establishment of an organizingcommittee representing diﬀerent institutions and arangeof engineering and relateddisciplines. Follow-ing good design practice, theOrganizingCommitteesolicited input from capstone design instructors andrepresentatives from industry at a special planningsession atASEE2013.Attendees of this sessionweresurveyed about their experiences with and motiva-tion formultidisciplinarydesign.Theywere asked todescribe the beneﬁts and challenges of the multi-disciplinary approach and let the Organizing Com-mittee know how the Capstone Conference couldhelp them incorporate or expand the use of multi-disciplinary design in their courses.Feedback from attendees indicated a preferenceformaintaining the format of the 2012 conference toallow for open discussion and networking opportu-nities with other capstone design instructors at the2014 conference.1723International Journal of Engineering Education Vol. 31, No. 6(B), pp. 1723–1726, 2015 0949-149X/91 $3.00+0.00Printed in Great Britain # 2015 TEMPUS Publications.3. Conference StructureThe 2014 Capstone Design Conference containedmany of the standard conference components,including papers, posters, panel discussions, andworkshops. All of the submitted papers underwenta peer review process. The conference was inten-tionally structured to enable and facilitate discus-sion and interaction beyond what occurs at manyacademic conferences. The bulk of the conferenceconsisted of highly interactive, facilitated panelsessions on topics connected to the conferencetheme of multidisciplinarity and experiential learn-ing. Most panel sessions focused on topicsaddressed by authors of accepted papers. Somepanels were targeted toward faculty, administra-tors, and industry representatives whereas otherswere targeted to the student attendees, although allpanels included a mix of attendees in the audience.Panel facilitators engaged the panelists and theaudience in discussions guided by prepared ques-tions and issues raised by the audience. Panelsessions were clustered around several themes:PERFORMANCE ASSESMENT What I Wish I Knew on the Job My First Year Communicating Progress in Capstone Classes Student Perspectives on Multidisciplinary Cap-stone Design Teams Assessment Challenges in Capstone Uncommon Deliverables in Capstone CoursesPROJECT SELECTION&ADMINISTRATION Global Capstone Design Project Definition Intellectual Property Best Practices in Industry SponsorshipCAPSTONE COURSE DESIGN Product vs Process Orientation Technical Design Reviews Infrastructure for Prototyping Nifty Ideas and Surprising Flops Case Studies in Use of Standards with CapstoneProjects: A Multidisciplinary ApproachCAPSTONE INSTRUCTIONAL PRACTICES Best Practices in Multidisciplinary CapstoneDesign IT Nuggets in Capstone Supporting Successful Teams Teaching Capstone DesignRather than many short presentations, authors ofaccepted papers displayed posters in two confer-ence-wide poster sessions. Forty-four posters show-cased conference papers by capstone design faculty,and thirteen posters highlighted recent capstonedesign projects by students. Given the conferencetheme, many posters highlighted approaches withinmultidisciplinary and interdisciplinary capstonecourses. Additional poster topics included designreviews, project sourcing and scoping, writing andcommunication, supporting capstone design teams,assessment and project scoring, sponsorship agree-ments and external relations, peer review and coop-erative learning, intellectual property, virtual teams,and entrepreneurship in capstone design. Theseposters addressed both key components of cuttingedge capstone design programs and current chal-lenges faced by capstone design educators, students,and sponsors. The combination of interactive paneland all-conference poster sessions provided atten-dees with multiple opportunities for interaction,networking, and sharing of best practices.The conference featured nine workshops spreadacross the conference, some over boxed dinners andothers in the morning run concurrently withoptional tours. Workshops ranged from the broad(Framework for Engineering Design Learning andAssessment), to the speciﬁc (Biomimicry =Engineer-ing + Biology: Tools for Capstone Design). Threeworkshops focused on training and support forcapstone faculty: I Didn’t Sign Up for This: Dealingwith Diﬃcult Students and Problem Teams, Coach-ing the Client: Collaborating with Sponsors to Max-imize Student Learning, and Formation andDeployment of a Capstone Course ’Blue Collar’Industrial Advisory Board. Two workshopsaddressed resources for capstone design teams:Using Requirements for Project Health Monitoringand Task Planning – a Management Toolbox forTeam Projects. Two workshops provided hands-onexposure to speciﬁc technical or pedagogical tools:Rapid Design of Embedded Systems with NI myRIO(led by National Instruments representatives) andUsing CATME to Assign Students to CapstoneTeams. All workshops provided opportunities forin-depth learning of new tools, methods, and bestpractices.The 2014 Capstone Conference included manysponsors and exhibitors including AmericanSociety for Engineering Education—Design inEngineering Education Division (DEED), ASTMInternational, IEEE, MathWorks, National Col-legiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance(NCIIA), National Council of Examiners for Engi-neering and Surveying (NCEES), National Instru-ments, Seelio, Stratasys, and Texas Instruments.Many of the sponsoring organizations sent repre-sentatives to the conference who not only exhibitedproducts and services of interest to capstone designfaculty and students, but facilitated workshops andparticipated in panel discussions and networkingactivities.Steven Beyerlein et al.1724The ﬁrst day of the conference featured a keynotepanel called Industry Perspectives onMultidisciplin-ary Design. Susan Finger, a program director in theDivision of Undergraduate Education at theNational Science Foundation, moderated a livelypanel discussion featuring four panelists fromindustry: Christopher O’Keefe (eNNOVEA),Duane Detwiler (Honda Vehicle Research),Robert Priest (Coltene-Whaledent), and AndrewWatchorn (National Instruments). The panelistsprovided their insights on the value of multidisci-plinary capstone design experiences in preparingstudents for careers in a multidisciplinary world,within and outside of engineering.The 2014 conference continued the tradition ofstudent involvement, reﬂecting students’ key role incapstone design. Based on a successful 2012 con-ference, the organizing committee created twomainpaths for student participation in the 2014 confer-ence: 1) capstone design project posters and 2)student panelists. Thirteen student projects, repre-senting a breadth of engineering disciplines, wereselected from a pool of nominated projects. Addi-tionally, eight students served as panelists on theconference panels, one ofwhichwas entitledStudentPerspectives on Multidisciplinary Capstone Teams,and featured students exclusively. Student involve-ment was again made possible by the generosity ofmultiple conference sponsors. Sponsorship fundsoﬀset the costs of student travel, helped pay con-ference expenses, and made reasonable registrationfees possible.In addition to poster, panel, and workshop ses-sions, the conference incorporated a wide range ofnetworking activities and conversations. On themorning of the ﬁrst day, the conference openedwith a plenary session including a team-baseddesign activity; the ﬁrst day ended with an informalsocial gathering over microbrews to connect newermembers of the capstone design community withmore seasoned colleagues. The next morning fea-tured two optional tours, one of the L Brands DC5distribution center in Reynoldsburg, OH, and theother ofHonda ofAmerica’s manufacturing facilityin Marysville, OH. Lunch on the second day wasconducted in ‘‘Birds of a Feather’’ style, in whichattendees joined groups according to topics ofinterest proposed in advance by session attendees.The third morning started bright and early with anoptional run/walk along the nearby OlentangyRiver. The conference concluded with an all-con-ference session (featuring an inaugural 00hat swap00of hats from attendees’ institutions) that recappedthe key points in all the panel sessions and began adiscussion of next steps.4. Conference Attendance and FeedbackThe 2014 conference was attended by approxi-mately 210 people, including faculty, students,administrators from nearly 90 universities, andrepresentatives from industry, government, andother interested organizations. Multiple engineer-ing and other technical disciplines such as aero-space, biomedical, civil, chemical, computer,electrical, environmental, industrial, mechanical,and software engineering were represented, as wellas industrial design, computer science, business, andothers.According to responses to the conference surveycollected after the closing session, attendee feedbackwas generally very positive. Attendees enjoyedmostthe sense of community (including informal discus-sions and exchange of ideas), interactive panels anddiversity of panels/workshops, networking (espe-cially during the poster sessions), organization ofthe conference, and tours. The most often cited newand useful ideas that attendees stated they wouldtake away from the conference and implement wereas follows: assignment ideas (topics, formats, etc.),assessment/evaluation strategies, strategies tointeract with clients, ideas for multidisciplinaryapproaches, and team building tools. Attendeescited multiple ideas for even more eﬀective meet-ings, including shortening the day/panel sessions abit to leave more time between events, avoidingoverlap of popular topics and/or creating a moreformal system ofminutes for thosemissing a sessiondue to schedule overlap, and providing a separatediscussion for projects without a prototype require-ment. Attendees also suggested screening panelistsmore carefully to avoid ‘‘gripe fests’’ and/or helpingprepare the panelists better, formalizing the ‘‘Birdsof a Feather’’ sessions, and providing structuredtime to meet and exchange ideas beyond socialevents that can be hard for new attendees.5. Next StepsFuture Capstone Design Conferences are plannedfor alternating (even-numbered) years,with the nextconference to be held again at The Ohio StateUniversity in Columbus, OH on June 6–8, 2016.During odd-numbered years, informal gatheringsof the capstone design community will be heldduring the summermeeting of theAmerican Societyfor Engineering Education (ASEE). These informalgatherings at ASEE will include opportunities fornetworking within the capstone design communityand discussion of future conference sessions ideasand structure. Feedback from previous conferenceattendees will also be considered to continuouslyimprove the experience of future conference atten-Guest Editorial 1725dees. After each biannual Capstone Design Con-ferencewe plan to publish a special issue of a journalhighlighting the best papers and sessions from thatconference, just as this issue of IJEE showcases the2014 Capstone Design Conference. Our long-termgoal is to grow the community of capstone designeducators, reﬂective practitioners, and designresearchers.Steven Beyerlein is a Professor ofMechanical Engineering at theUniversity of Idahowhere he has played a leadership rolein the development of an inter-disciplinary capstone program over the last twenty years. Dr. Beyerlein earned a B.S. inMechanical Engineering from the University ofMassachusetts, anM.S. in Engineering Science fromDartmouth College,and a Ph.D. inMechanical Engineering fromWashington State University. Since joining the University of Idaho in 1987,Dr. Beyerlein has been an active participant in a long line of engine development and demonstration vehicle realizationprojects supported by theNational Institute forAdvancedTransportationTechnology.He has also beenhighly engaged ina variety of research teams focusing on assessment of design learning, peer mentoring, active learning pedagogies, andfaculty development for project learning.Jay R. Goldberg is a Clinical Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Laﬀerty Professor of Engineering, and Director of theHealthcare TechnologiesManagement Program atMarquetteUniversity where he teaches courses involving new productdevelopment andmedical device design.His experience includes development of newproducts in urology, orthopedics,GI,and dentistry. Dr. Goldberg earned a B.S. in general engineering from the University of Illinois and an M.S. inbioengineering from the University of Michigan. He earned a master’s degree in engineering management and Ph.D. inbiomedical engineering from Northwestern University. Before moving into academia, he was director of technology andquality assurance forMilestone Scientiﬁc Inc. (Deerﬁeld, IL), a start-up dental product company. Prior to that, he workedfor Surgitek (Racine,WI), Baxter (Deerﬁeld, IL), andDePuy (Warsaw, IN).Dr.Goldberg is a co-creator of the BME-ideanational student design competition, and writes a quarterly column on senior capstone design courses for IEEE Pulse.Susannah Howe is the Design Clinic Director in the Picker Engineering Program at Smith College, where she coordinatesand teaches the capstone engineering design course. Her current research focuses on innovations in engineering designeducation, particularly at the capstone level. She is also involved with eﬀorts to foster design learning in middle schoolstudents and to support entrepreneurship at primarily undergraduate institutions. Her background is in civil engineeringwith a focus on structural materials; she holds a B.S.E. degree from Princeton University, andM.Eng. and Ph.D. degreesfrom Cornell University.Scott E. Palo is the Victor Charles Schelke Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences and the Associate Dean forResearch in theCollege ofEngineering andApplied Science at theUniversity ofColoradoBoulder.His research focuses onstudying the near earth space environment, constructing small satellites to conduct space physics and developing scientiﬁcinstruments for unmanned aerial systems. Dr. Palo has worked closely with student design teams to design, build, test,launch and operate multiple small satellites. His educational interests focus around hands-on experiential learning andinclude both graduate and undergraduate team based design courses. Dr. Palo earned a B.S. in electrical and computerengineering from Clarkson University and M.S. and Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of ColoradoBoulder. He is a senior member of the IEEE, an associate fellow of the AIAA and a member of URSI and Sigma Xi.Renee Rogge is an Associate Professor of Applied Biology & Biomedical Engineering at Rose-Hulman Institute ofTechnology. She has been teaching at Rose-Hulman since 2004, and her research interests lie in the areas of assessment ofengineering design and orthopedic biomechanics. Dr. Rogge is one of the course coordinators for the BiomedicalEngineering design sequence and is an active member of the Design in Engineering Education Division of the AmericanSociety for Engineering Education. She received degrees in Biomedical Engineering from Tulane University and theUniversity of Iowa.R.KeithStanﬁll is theDirector of theUniversity ofFlorida’s IntegratedProduct andProcessDesignProgram–an industry-sponsored multidisciplinary capstone design and build course. IPPD is celebrating 20 years of success, with 14 of thoseyears under Dr. Stanﬁll’s leadership. He received his B.S., M.E., and Ph.D. degrees in mechanical engineering fromUF in1985, 1991 and 1995, respectively. He joined the UF Industrial and Systems Engineering faculty in 1999 as the IPPDAssociate Director and was promoted to IPPD Director in 2001. In Fall 2013, he joined the Engineering InnovationInstitute. His interests include technology transfer, entrepreneurship, product development, design education andDesignfor X. Dr. Stanﬁll has over ten years’ industrial experience with United Technologies Corporation and is a registeredprofessional engineer in the state of Florida.Steven Beyerlein et al.1726

Guest Editorial: The 2014 Capstone Design Conference

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