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We look for projects and mentors to help us create an authentic design experience in CE&ARE Capstone Design. This page provides information about how to sponsor and mentor a project.
An ideal project would challenge students in multiple civil and/or architectural engineering discipline. Some examples of past projects include an elementary school, a police station with an eco-roof, highway intersection/roundabout redesign, highway design with a culvert for encouraging fish passage, a classroom building, a veterinary hospital, and an office building.
The capstone course typically enrolls 110-140 senior engineering students, and the students work in teams of 5 or 6. We aim to have 3 to 4 unique projects each year. Ideally, projects offer interdisciplinary collaborations for teams of students who “specialize” in two or more civil or architectural engineering disciplines (geotechnical, structural, transportation, geomatics, and water resources engineering, lighting, mechanical systems, and building envelope design). Students are supported by project mentors, other industry professionals, and faculty members in their design work and produce technical design reports, engineering drawings, and presentations. We seek projects and mentors who can help us to inspire creative solutions, provide a rewarding multi-disciplinary and culminating design experience, and prepare these students for professional practice.
Students begin working on their designs in January and wrap up in early June. Project review and selection begin the August prior so that we can be ready with project files and other resources.
If you are interested, check out the "What do project sponsors and mentors do?" dropdown list below.
Questions? Have a project and mentors in mind? E-mail judy.liu@oregonstate.edu
What do project sponsors and mentors do?
What do project sponsors and mentors do?
Provide project documentation (e.g. plans, specifications, design reports, etc.) by November 1; sample lists of project documentation can be found on the Past Projects page.
Provide project documentation for a similar project for student reference by November 1
This project may be used for exploratory activities and as examples of professional design work for the students to reference.
Have your own project mentor team of at least 2-3 people available to help with the project, in case one person is out of town or busy on other projects
Ideally, the mentors' expertise will reflect primary disciplines for the capstone project (e.g. the mentor team for an office building project might include structural, geotechnical, water resources, lighting design, and mechanical systems engineers). We also welcome the valuable insights and perspectives that architects can contribute as mentors for building projects.
Not everyone on your team would need to actively assist each week. We expect that you will find the best distribution of project mentor duties within your team.
Attend 2 to 3 help sessions to answer questions about the project.
These help sessions will be used to provide insight on developing the project scope, exploring design alternatives and design constraints, and other project-related questions and design discussion.
We expect that these 1- to 2-hour help sessions would require a time commitment of approximately 3 to 6 hours total over the two terms.
Your entire project mentor team is welcome, but not required, to attend each of the help sessions.
Weekly, have at least one member of your team check your project discussion board.
The project-specific discussion board will allow all students working on the project to see what questions are asked, answers to the questions, and any other shared information. The intent is to consolidate questioning in an efficient way that also keeps a record of each discussion.
Additional discussion boards will be created for each civil and architectural engineering discipline, and your involvement in these boards would be optional.
Plan on an overall time commitment of approximately 1-person hour per week.
This time would mainly be used to answer student questions, provide project data, and engage with students on the project-specific discussion board.
Who spends this time is up to the project mentors and may depend on availability, the nature of the student questions, etc.
Image sources: ODOT, DLR Group
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