Selection and Execution of Civil Engineering Capstone Design Projects at the United States Coast Guard Academy
Year: 2025
Type: conference-paper
Abstract: Civil engineering students at the United States Coast Guard Academy (USCGA) must complete a capstone project as a graduation requirement.The main objective is to enable students to experience real life engineering problem solving, design, team work, project execution and management.To satisfy program and accreditation requirements, the projects must have certain components such as problem definition, research, scheduling, solution analysis, design and communication of results.To better prepare our students for their unique future roles as civil engineers in the Coast Guard, most capstone projects involve working with Coast Guard officers and civilian engineers in the field on actual Coast Guard projects.Project selection criteria include funding for site visits, a mandatory design component, a reasonable project schedule, realistic stakeholder expectations and a good match with expertise of the faculty advisors.The capstone design teams are provided specific instructions to guide them through the execution of their capstone projects.These guidelines include mandatory weekly progress meetings with advisors followed by documented meeting minutes that are disseminated to the project team including the advisor and the stakeholders; a final comprehensive technical report; a final notebook that demonstrates their progress throughout the semester which is provided as a reference to the sponsors; three poster presentations at various stages of the project; and a final presentation where the teams present to all stakeholders of the capstone project.The authors discuss the development and execution of successful capstone projects at the USCGA and provide strategies for meeting Program Educational Outcomes while ensuring projects are useful to the Coast Guard.
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--53839
Institution: United States Coast Guard Academy
Language: English
Subfield: Architecture
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: gold
OpenAlex ID: W4409109119