A commitment by the ECE Department of Rose-Hulman to develop and offer an entrepreneurial design sequence as a curricular hallmark has been rewarded by satisfied clients and design-savvy graduates over the past decade. The highly-coordinated, four-course sequence features a wide range of topics including creativity, teamwork skills, design methodology, systems engineering, product design specifications, conceptual design, design reviews, intellectual property, project management, budgeting, scheduling, proposal writing, social impact considerations, prototype fabrication and testing, client briefings, and project reporting. Students apply these concepts as they propose, undertake, and complete projects for a variety of clients. The tenor of the sequence focuses on the underlying principle that engineering is a profession in which services for clients are rendered in an equitable, economical and ethical manner. This paper describes the learning objectives, evolution, current status, and assessment of the four-course sequence. This paper details the content, implementation, activities, teaching loads, assessment, and student reactions to the design sequence. Index Terms – Creativity, Teamwork, Design, Project, Professional . Introduction “. . . the proper study of mankind is the science of design . . .”, Herbert A. Simon In the mid-90’s, the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department of Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology completed a thorough curricular review with a special focus on the design component. Many (and sometimes contradictory) views of the design process were presented and discussed during the intense and lengthy process. The process was concluded by a deep departmental commitment to enhance and strengthen the design component of the curriculum. In reaching this decision, the department made the painful decision to replace three, senior-level technical electives—those courses that are fun to teach since they are taken by students who choose to be there— with a coordinated, four-course, design sequence. During this curricular design process, a number of underlying principles emerged and provided the guidelines by which the ECE design sequence was developed. ‚ Engineering is a serving profession. ‚ Design is the basis of all engineering activities. ‚ Modern engineering design requires teamwork skills. ‚ Decision-making and communications are vital components of design. ‚ Learning the process of design is best accomplished by designing solutions to real problems. ‚ Useful design techniques and models must be provided to students. ‚ Students must be responsible for the success of their project. ‚ The design sequence must be well-coordinated. ‚ Faculty workloads within the design sequence must not be burdensome. ‚ High-quality design is challenging, but this creative process is highly rewarding and FUN. Based upon these principles a four-course design sequence has evolved over the past decade; the process, its implementation, and its results are described in the remainder of this paper. The Design Sequence v1.0 The professional nature of engineering is a value that must be deeply ingrained within the students. Accordingly, the original version of the design sequence spanned the sophomore, junior, and senior years. Personal responsibility and team work were the hallmarks of the design sequence. Students were confronted with situations that required them to practice the principles of design and to make decisions. The problems were devised to be increasingly challenging, required additional team skills, and demanded more creative thinking as the students progressed through the sequence. Each team had a faculty mentor who asked probing questions and raised important issues, but very purposely avoided the role of problem solver. The sequence concluded with each team developing and realizing P ge 12235.4 a solution to a unique customer problem. Throughout the entire sequence, communications—internal to the team and external to the client and the faculty mentor—was required. Each term a written report and oral presentation concluded the project. ‚ The sophomore year course, Engineering Practice, focused upon development of teamwork skills and the corresponding communications (agendas, minutes, and memos) necessary for good team work. The course content was based in engineering economics for which a variety of increasingly challenging projects were assigned to the teams. The course culminated with a multi-week, open-ended, final project for which a written report and oral presentation were required. All faculty members of the department mentored one team. ‚ The junior year course, Principles of Design, required each team to respond to a unique set of client requirements (often provided by a faculty member) so that they designed and fabricated a prototype solution. Student teams were expected to organize their efforts to complete the work in one ten-week term. A written report and an oral presentation concluded the project. All members of the department mentored one team. ‚ The senior year courses, Engineering Design I & II, required each team to respond to the needs of an external client (usually a company or a governmental or non-profit agency) by identifying the client’s needs, defining system requirements, proposing alternate solutions, choosing the “best” solution, and designing, constructing and delivering a prototype solution. Each team was required to maintain regular, professional communications with their client. The twenty-five week project culminated in a written report and an oral presentation at the ECE Senior Project Symposium. Several faculty members mentored three or four teams each. Lessons Learned and Design Sequence Modifications Continuous monitoring and assessment of the design sequence for several years following its introduction was very revealing. The findings are summarized in the following list: ‚ The sophomore course was extremely unpopular with the students as they found engineering economics totally irrelevant to their view of engineering. ‚ The junior course was a modest success with the students, but the faculty felt a heavy burden of devising challenging, yet achievable problems with good learning-teaching experiences. ‚ The senior course clients were very enthusiastic about the creativity of the student designs and the quality of their work. ‚ The senior course was a bit burdensome for faculty teaching loads. ‚ Close coordination of the courses helped avoid repetition and smooth transitions between courses while providing increasingly challenging experiences to students. A review of these findings made it painfully clear that changes in the sophomore course were needed. The very poor student evaluations of the sophomore course were addressed by implementing a major change in both content and delivery. Though the subject of engineering economy introduced students to important material, as sophomores they were more concerned with technical details such as differential equations and node-voltage techniques. They were unable to see the relevance of this subject to their engineering career. To enliven the course and to focus more upon design, engineering economics was replaced by introductory system design principles. These principles were applied to the very real problems associated with autonomous robotic competition. The competition between teams was added to further engage students in the process. In its original form the course was set in a typical classroom lecture environment with an associated laboratory for team meetings; the revised format was wholly laboratory based with brief, daily introductory remarks on the principles of engineering design and practice and with limited outside homework assignments. In addition, the course was moved to the beginning of the junior year to take advantage of increased student maturity. The burdensome nature of the teaching load associated with the junior course was due in part to the process of proposing new, “workable” problems and in part due to the heavy load of grading the many documents required from the students. In addition to this pressure, several other factors were coming to bear upon the junior level course as well. It became apparent that entrepreneurial and project management skills were becoming increasingly P ge 12235.5 important in engineering. Changing community needs resulted in an increasing number of requests from non-profit and charitable organizations for product development. With these factors in mind, the junior level course was revised to reflect a more service learning nature. The course focused on client-driven, entrepreneurial product development to meet the needs of community based clients. Accordingly, students discover client needs, define product specifications, search for relevant intellectual property, prepare budgetary and scheduling plans, consider social impact of the product; in short they prepare a complete proposal for the development of a product to meet the client’s needs. The heavy grading load for the many written components of the proposals was greatly reduced by the introduction of Calibrated Peer Review (CPR) in which the students evaluate each others work and in the process are able to better judge their written work. This has resulted in a significant reduction in the faculty workload of the original course, yet with significant improvement in student writing skills. Subject matter experts in entrepreneurial and project management skills provide guest lecturer coverage as needed. Based upon the enthusiastic client response, the senior, project design course was working. In order to reduce the faculty workload to a sustainable level, the student teams were assigned increased independence and responsibility for the success of their design. The faculty mentor serves as a manager in a consulting company with several student teams working directly with their client. The faculty member does no