Engineering and Sustainable Community Development (ESCD). This course is an introduction to the relationship between engineering and sustainable community development (SCD) from historical, political, ideological, ethical, cultural, and practical perspectives. Students will study and analyze different dimensions of community and sustainable development and the role that engineering might play in them. Also students will critically explore strengths and limitations of dominant methods in engineering problem solving, design, and research for working in SCD. Students will learn to research, describe, analyze and evaluate case studies in SCD and develop criteria for their evaluation.

A class from the Colorado School of Mines

Senior Design I is the first course of your two-semester, culminating capstone design experience. In this course, you will be addressing realistic, open-ended design challenges for clients in interdisciplinary (when appropriate) teams. The design projects are chosen by the course faculty to develop creativity, encourage use of appropriate design methods, and application of prior course work. You are expected to apply your undergraduate course work and technical skills to successfully address the given challenge. Successful teams will devise a solution in partnership with their client/instructors and within constraints such as sustainability, manufacturability/constructability, and cost limitations. In addition to completing a project, you will be introduced to what it means to be an ethical, professional engineer in modern industry. By the end of the first semester, teams should have an alpha prototype or pre-prototype to demonstrate at least one function on their solution. Model, site plan-based, and simulation-based projects must demonstrate clear goal attainment at the time of Intermediate Design Review in the second semester.