Trains, planes and automobiles - that could have been the theme for this year's senior engineering Capstone projects.
Twenty-seven student teams from the Fulton College of Engineering and Technology came together for the past two semesters as part of the yearlong "Capstone" course to learn and create engineering solutions for sponsoring companies from Union Pacific to Boeing to Detroit Diesel.
Click on the photos to the right to read up on some of this year's Capstone projects.
This year the Capstone program, in its 19th year, provided a unique opportunity by making the student projects available to anyone who wants to take a peek.
During a Capstone program fair Thursday, April 2, engineering students showed how they are trying to make airplane construction more safe, locomotive travel more efficient and heart surgery instruments more capable.
Capstone is a yearlong educational course that enables cross-functional student teams to work on real, industry-sponsored projects. Students come from mechanical engineering, manufacturing engineering technology, electrical and computer engineering, industrial design and other disciplines.
Each team is assigned a faculty coach and works closely with a liaison engineer from the sponsoring company. With this year's group of projects, the Capstone course will have completed 515 projects for clients and sponsors since its inception in 1990.
"Capstone was developed to improve our students' education while providing engineering resources for mid- to back-burner projects for sponsoring companies," said Gregg Warnick, Capstone external relations coordinator."Student teams take real-life projects from concept generation and modeling to working prototype. The companies receive all the intellectual property that is developed, and the course is also an effective way to evaluate potential employees over an extended period of time compared to traditional interviews."
