EPICS: A Model for Integrating Service-Learning into the Engineering Curriculum
Once a project has been selected for the EPICS
Program, the service agency that will be directly
involved is designated the Project Partner.
Phase 2 - Assembling a Project Team
Once a project and Project Partner have been
identified, a student team is organized. This is done
by advertising the project in undergraduate classes
and on the World Wide Web. Depending on the
needs of the Project Partner, the students chosen
for each Project Team. may reflect a single engineering discipline or may be multidisciplinary,
including students from two or more engineering
fields.
The team must be vertically integrated: it must
be a mix of sophomores, juniors and seniors. Each
student is requested to participate in the project for
as many semesters as possible. The combination of
a vertically integrated team and long-term student
participation ensures continuity in projects from
semester to semester and year to year. Projects can
thus last many years if new students, especially
sophomores, are recruited for the project as team
members graduate. In the first two years of operation, 124 students have participated in the EPICS
Program. Retention has been excellent. Based on
registrations for the Fall 1995, Spring 1996, Fall
1996, and Spring 1997 semesters, 74% of the students who were available to return to the program
in the following semester (i.e., were not graduating
or off campus on a co-op assignment) did so.
The seniors are generally expected to be the team
leaders and to have primary technical and managerial responsibility. Their responsibilities include
system design, solving technical problems, and
training, monitoring, and directing the sophomores
and juniors in the tasks of system construction,
testing, and deployment. The responsibilities of
juniors include assisting the seniors in the planning
and organization of the project, solving technical
problems, meeting with the Project Partner, and
helping supervise the sophomores. They also have
principal responsibility for finding sources of
information or technical expertise needed for the
project. The sophomores become familiar with the
project by maintaining the project home page,
assisting in the preparation of reports and presentations, and performing tasks assigned to them by the
juniors and seniors.
Sophomores in the EPICS Program register for
one credit per semester; juniors and seniors register
for one or two credits per semester. For students in
Electrical and Computer Engineering, registration
for EPICS in their senior year fulfills the senior
design requirement, and EPICS participation
counts toward the laboratory requirement. For
other engineering disciplines, EPICS registration
can be used to fulfill a technical elective requirement. Teams have included students from
Electrical and Computer Engineering, Mechanical
Engineering, Aeronautical Engineering, Industrial
Engineering, Interdisciplinary Engineering,
Computer Science, and Management.
Each student in the EPICS Program attends the
weekly two-hour meeting of his/her team in the
EPICS laboratory and the common one-hour lecture given each week for all EPICS students. A
majority of the lectures are by guest experts, and
have covered a wide range of topics. The Executive
Director of United Way of Tippecanoe County has
met with the EPICS students. Lectures on communications and reporting have included topics such
as proposal writing, technical presentations, collaborative report writing, creating World Wide Web
documents, and visual design. Faculty members
from the Krannert School of Management at
Purdue have given presentations on project management, team dynamics, and a series of six lectures (two per semester) on ethics. The students
have participated in a "diversity workshop" run by
Purdue's Office of Diversity and Multicultural
Affairs. A series of lectures on entrepreneurship
has brought in speakers from local start-up companies and the founder of a national engineering company, as well as speakers from the Krannert School
of Management, Purdue's Office of Industry
Relations and Office of Technology Transfer, the
Director of the local Business and Industrial
Development Center, and the attorney for the City
of Lafayette. Purdue Engineering faculty and staff
have made presentations on the design process and
product safety, as well as on technical topics relevant to several of the teams.
Phase 3 - The Project Proposal
During the first semester of a project, the Project
Team meets several times with its Project Partner
and the EPICS faculty to define the project and
determine its goals. During this phase the Project
Team learns about the mission, needs, and priorities of the Project Partner. A key aspect of this
phase is identifying projects that satisfy three criteria: they are needed by the Project Partner, they
require engineering design, and they are a reasonable match to the team's capabilities. Also, to
ensure that the students build confidence and the
Project Partners see progress, the teams are encouraged to pursue a mix of long-term and short-term
projects. Short-term projects generally require only
one or two semesters to complete; long-term projects take two or more years. This process of project definition culminates in a written proposal and
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