ME Graduate Student Tanya Das has been awarded Honorable Mention at the 2016 American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Student Poster Competition at their annual conference in Washington, DC, this February. The poster, titled “Assessment of an Undergraduate Engineering Design Capstone Course” illustrated the success of the detailed assessment process created for the Department’s Capstone Design Program.

The capstone design course plays a crucial role in teaching students to creatively integrate and apply their knowledge to a hands-on engineering design project of their choice. As such, these courses are both a fundamental part of the learning process and difficult to evaluate. In order to assess and improve this vital component of mechanical engineering (ME) education, a group advised by Dr. Lubi Lenaburg and Dr. Tyler Susko is combining data from student surveys and self-assessments, weekly progress rubrics, and focus group interviews with students. Through these methods, they hope to identify any shortcomings of the capstone course, implement improvements, and study the efficacy of those improvements over the course of one academic quarter.

These assessments have proven so effective that the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC), which accredits UCSB, now requires all universities to perform these studies. The ME Department at UCSB is proud of Ms. Das for gaining recognition for the assessment program and hopeful that they can continue to respond to students’ needs to craft a program that will nurture their creativity and prepare them for careers after graduation.