Revised 26 January 2009
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Senior Design Projects
At the University of Delaware, the Mechanical Engineering Department's Senior Design capstone engineering course is MEEG 401. First titled as 'New Castle Design Associates (NCDA),' the original courses were created in September 1976 by Dr. John R. Zimmerman, Professor Emeritus (deceased).
From its inception in the 1976-1977 academic year until the end of the 1999-2000 academic year, Senior Design was a three-credit fall plus three-credit spring two-course design sequence (MEEG447, MEEG448). To better imitate the actual timing for a design effort of the scope typical for a senior-design effort, starting with the Fall Semester 2000, Senior Design became a six credit, fall semester, course.
Senior Design has always been structured to imitate the scenario a young engineer would experience in a design team in industry. Teams are assigned a project, discover customers' wants and problem constraints, benchmark the best practices for each desired function, generate design concepts, select and model the best concept, complete a proof-of-concept prototype, test it, re-design and improve their designs, and produce a path forward. Each MEEG 401 student is a Senior-Design staff engineer. Senior Design, MEEG 401, is a required course for all seniors in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Delaware.
[Senior Design enrollment history graph.]
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