The Department of Civil and Mechanical Engineering has adopted an increasingly vigorous project-based learning approach to its curricular content. Consistent with trends in undergraduate engineering education, CME leverages a robust summer individual academic development program and provides diverse options for independent studies for cadets who express a desire and aptitude to create depth within the field. A year-long senior capstone project synthesizes three years of core and program coursework and challenges cadets to solve relevant problems of great interest to the Department of Defense (DoD). Cadets in CME routinely publish technical articles, and many have been awarded provisional and full patents to protect the intellectual property developed by their creative problem-solving approaches in their capstone design.
Multi-Disciplinary Problem Solvers Supporting a Diverse Clientele. Cadets within the CME programs engage in projects spanning the breadth of their disciplines. Many projects directly support the Army Research Development and Engineering Command (RDECOM) and its subordinate units. As one example, the Armament Research and Development Command (ARDEC) at Picatinny Arsenal, NJ, requested that cadets propose a flash suppressor for the M249 automatic weapon capable of withstanding the associated high rates of fire. Cadets designed, fabricated, and tested their design through multiple iterations culminating in a model that significantly reduced the audible and visual signature of the weapon. As a result of this success, ARDEC has rushed this prototype into field testing. The Structural Integrated Panel (SIP) hut project comprises cadets and faculty from civil, mechanical, and environmental engineering in collaboration to design a small unit shelter that four untrained Soldiers can erect in four hours without any previous site improvements. Novel contributions include a quickly deployable foundation system capable of placement on an unprepared site within an hour and a roofing system that is ready for photovoltaic panel deployment. Both U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) and U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) have requested fielding of these systems within their areas of operation due to their rapid assembly, energy efficiency, and low life-cycle cost of operation. Similarly, both the Holston and Radford Army Ammunition Plant commanders continually request essential engineering assessment of critical civil and environmental engineering issues within their respective facilities.
Operate, Lead and Win in a Complex World. The culture of excellence within CME allows project sponsors to set high expectations for their investment. Department cadets demand opportunities to demonstrate their ability to operate autonomously just as they will as junior officers in the Army. The Department constantly seeks high-payoff opportunities for cadet research and engineering across a wide range of sub-disciplines and tracks. In concert with the Center for Innovation and Engineering, the Civil and Mechanical Engineering programs foster a longitudinal academic experience that culminates with unique, novel, and substantial support to the Army and DoD while developing the critical thinking skills necessary for graduates to operate, lead, and win in a complex world.