Early Design: Lessons and Strategies from SUCCEED

How can we involve our students in realistic engineering experience before the senior capstone design? The Early Design Megaproject component of the NSF-sponsored SUCCEED Coalition has tried various approaches over the last three years, and we learned many lessons. We share our experience in this paper. Schools include North Carolina State University, Georgia Tech, Virginia Tech, Clemson, Florida and North Carolina A&T University. Departments include Aerospace, Mechanical, Industrial, Civil and Chemical Engineering. This paper describes what we’ve done and what we’ve learned.