Our vertically integrated design project is one project being conducted by the NSF-sponsored SUCCEED coalition Early Design Megaproject. This megaproject includes design teachers from most of the coalition schools. Schools besides Virginia Tech include NC State, Clemson, Florida, Georgia Tech and UNC-Greensboro. This project has developed a manual which describes the different approaches, and will have a session at the 1996 ASEE Meeting to describe our experiences. Thge manual is available on the SUCCEED WEB page, as the Early DesignManual.
Of particular interest is a program in the electrical engineering program. It is the North Carolina State University Engineering Entrepreneurs Program. Details can be found at:
and
http://www3.ncsu.edu/dox/who.html
In this program seniors head a team of students that include freshmen, sophomores and juniors. This solves the problem of not being able to scale up the program we have, where typically six seniors work with two freshmen. This limits the number of freshmen. In our relatively difficult aircraft design program it is not clear to us that seniors are ready to direct a team of underclassmen. However, it is a program that works for design classes that emphasize the design process.