SE CAPSTONE - Introducing Multidisciplinary Capstone Design to the United States Coast Guard Academy

Prepared in collaboration with Systems Engineering Research Center. Presented at the ASEE Conference, Vancouver, BC, Canada on June 26-29, 2011.

The United States Coast Guard Academy (USCGA) is one of five Service Academies educating and training generations of Military Officers. USCGA offers eight majors including four engineering majors- Civil, Electrical and Computer, Mechanical and Naval Architectural and Marine Engineering. Each major has traditionally taught its own capstone design course, which ranged from a one-semester paper project to a two-semester project with a functional prototype. Multidisciplinary projects have been rare and collaboration on projects has usually been limited to having cadets from other majors working as part of design teams, but usually being enrolled in a separate independent study (directed study). This paper will highlight changes brought to USCGA through the Department of Defense (DOD) Systems Engineering Grant. As part of the DOD Systems Engineering Grant, Civil, Mechanical and Electrical and Computer Engineering are collaborating on a project. The goal of this project is to design and build a bolt-on hybridization system for existing fleets of medium sized trucks. Cadets from Civil and Mechanical Engineering are collaborating as a capstone team with two Electrical Engineering cadets who are collaborating with them via a directed study. The amount of collaboration required for this grant is a major departure from past years. In this pilot, there are three Faculty Advisors, representing the three majors and a senior faculty member supervising the entire project. Issues that are being addressed include: differences in textbooks, grading schemes, course policies, assignments and schedules. The paper will discuss the rapid rate of change driven by the DOD grant and how these obstacles were overcome.