Engineering capstone course combines multiple disciplines

This class is called Interdisciplinary Capstone. So you can see a bunch of work benches here. Each bench is a unique project. Some of them are sponsored by companies like Lockheed Martin. They have a problem description they give to the students, and then the students have two semesters to solve whatever that problem is. In many cases, that's designing, building, and testing a device. Everyone brings something unique to the design process and to the product. So I might have a bit more knowledge in one area. Someone else on the group might have a little bit more knowledge, and together, we can make a better product and a better solution. We all have the engineering basics and the basis, so we all have an idea of what's going on. But enhancing my electrical or coding skills through them and learning from them is a huge help, and also teaching them things such as CAD and other mechanical aspects has been a lot of fun and very helpful for us. Capstone is experiential learning. I mean, that is the whole focus. I mean, we do all open ended projects that are connecting them to industry practices, industry standards. How does design, testing, manufacturing happen in the real world. That's what they're getting. Having the Capstone be a part of the design team has made my workload a lot more manageable, but also makes me work more in the design team, and as a member of Capstone, that I would have, if I hadn't done this. A lot of our sponsors participate because they want the final deliverable that the students create. But some of them are also in it for recruiting. So they want to hire our students, which lots of people want to do because Virginia Tech engineering is so great. But now they're wanting to hire the IDC students because they already have experience working on multi disciplinary teams. As a mechanical engineer ,'m going to go and I'm also going to work with electrical softwares. I'm not just going to be working with mechanical engineers, so getting that exposure early on has been crucial to, you know, what I'm going to see going to the industry. It's a huge help to bridge the gap between academics and the professional world. Working with an interdisciplinary team, working with different types of engineers and different majors. Really helps incorporate what it'll look like when we get out of graduation. It can also be fun to meet students that are outside of your own major and learn a little bit about human factors for programming or how to create and design a circuit board. And so our students are getting a more varied experience, but also experience that helps them after they graduate.