From the Industry to the Student: Project Management of an Industry-sponsored Multidisciplinary Capstone Project

Abstract

Bob Rhoads works for the Engineering Education Innovation Center in the College of Engineering at Ohio State University as the Multidisciplinary Capstone Program Coordinator for Capstone Design. In this position, he coordinates senior engineering capstone projects that are industry-sponsored and involve multiple engineering and non-engineering undergraduate students. He graduated from Ohio State with a bachelor's of science in mechanical engineering. After graduation, he worked in the glass manufacturing industry for more than 12 years in various roles from process engineering to sales engineering to design engineering. While working, he received his master's in business administration and attended several process control and quality trainings. Before coming to Ohio State, he was an engineering technology faculty member for three years at the community college of Zane State College in Zanesville, Ohio. At Zane State, he taught several engineering courses including CAD, solid modeling, statics, strength of materials, machine design, and statistical process control, as well as many others.

Implementation of Industry-Inspired Project Management Elements in an Entrepreneurial Capstone Sequence

“…Teams submitted minutes from each of those meetings, logging work done by each team member, individual assignments for the next week, and a record of all decisions made at a given meeting. Rather than asking students to complete anonymous surveys to record time invested on the design process [8], students were expected to submit to the faculty mentor individual work reports, listing the specific hours worked and documenting the deliverables of that work (i.e., work products).…”