WHO GETS THE PROJECT THEY DESERVE

Abstract

The Applied Engineering Technology Department in the College of Engineering at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte had a problem. At the beginning of each Spring and Fall semester all the graduating senior, from all of the engineering disciplines are required to complete a group projects which requires the knowledge and expertise from multiple engineering disciplines. The problem was that at the time each student was given a list of proposed projects and then asked to choose three projects from the list of projects, ranking them from first choice, second choice, to third choice. A senior design committee was convened at the beginning of every semester (Spring and Fall) and the “horse trading” would begin. There were projects that had higher priorities, such as those that were funded through government grants or private industry initiatives, than other projects. Other than each student’s top three choices for projects, which were essentially reviewed manually, no other information was taken into consideration with regard to the student placement in a given project. Therefore, the senior design committee spent an inordinate amount of time at the beginning of each semester (Spring and Fall) to assign various students to various projects one at a time, by hand.