What We Learned, When We Learned It, and How We Learned It: Takeaways from an Institution's Aerospace Engineering Capstone Experience.

Aerospace engineering requires a broad foundation of skills students are to develop throughout their educational careers. Beyond the physics and mathematics fundamentals, it can be beneficial for students to explore more specialized topics or platforms that interest them. For some students at Saint Louis University, this specialization can appear as late as their final capstone projects where they are to design (and in some cases, build) a system such as an aircraft, rocket, or spacecraft. This paper offers a reflection from alumni of an aerospace engineering undergraduate program on the impacts of the required course track (fundamentals) for their degree on the success of their final capstone projects (specialization). Within some engineering programs, a disconnect can occur when the specialized interests of the student do not align well with the required or offered course material. This paper identifies some areas where students had gaps in their knowledge and experiences, as well as what they had to do to fill in those gaps. The methods used to gather the reflections included a survey of alumni as well as expanded case studies provided by the authors. The findings suggest that required course-tracks are lacking hands-on engineering experiences such as learning about manufacturing or the use of specialized software programs. Further, some course-tracks focus on particular topics in aerospace engineering and students interested in other areas are left to fill their knowledge gaps on their own. Though the primary course-tracks for engineering programs may be lacking in structured routes for specialization, capstone projects are seen to provide students with the opportunity to augment coursework knowledge with specialized skills and to explore different aspects of the design process before graduating. The findings suggest this is done by applying skills learned from extracurriculars or internship experience. In addition, input from mentors--either those who work in industry or professors--can also prove to be a valuable asset. The capstone also affords students the opportunity to cooperate and communicate with other engineers--another aspect of engineering not taught explicitly--to achieve more successful results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]