Senior Design - Winter Term Meetings
Dear MSE Seniors,
Welcome back and Happy New Year to you all. I hope that you all enjoyed the term break. I also hope (hint) that some of you managed to spend at least some time working on your Senior Design projects. The Fall Term presentations went very well, with everyone doing a good job...well done! Everyone's grades were good too..the lowest being a B, again indicative of the good job everyone did in the Fall. Fall term is, however, now behind us, and now your focus must shift from "plans and intentions" to "results and accomplishments" - the Winter quarter is the time to really get to grips with your projects and get the bulk of your project work completed, so that Spring term is left largely for tying up loose ends, completing any longer-term experiments, writing final reports and preparing your final presentations. Spring will also have a "Writing Intensive" designation, so there will be additional earlier deadlines for written reports etc. to allow for the WIT reviews and feedback.
This (Winter) term our assigned meeting slot is Fridays, from 10:00 am to 12 Noon, and I have the Materials Dept. Conf room (LeBow 348) reserved for the whole term. I also have the Dept. laptop and projector reserved for that time slot too. As before, your primary technical guidance should come from your advisor(s) and mentors. I plan on using the assigned group meeting slots as follows:
1. For informal reviews and presentation of your latest results...even if it's only "work in progress." Some of you may have results or data that you're not sure about, or are unsure about how best to present it, or are unsure of its interpretation and so on...so involving the group may help...everyone's suggestions and input will be helpful and welcome. I expect each of you to come along prepared to present something, however brief, each week. It doesn't have to be perfectly formatted or rehearsed, but I do want to see that everyone is making progress each week, so the presentations can be brief. It will also be good practice for you on presenting your findings and answering questions.
2. Discussion of topics pertinent to your projects.
3. Raising of issues, problems etc. relating to your projects...if anyone is having difficulties accessing a particular piece of equipment, of getting samples analyzed then I need to know because I can probably get things expedited. But I can only do that if I'm aware of the problem!
We will devote the first meeting (1/12/07) to a debrief of the Fall Term presentations...I have marked up copies of most everyone's written reports (you may have copies of these but we do need to keep the originals for ABET) and the assessment sheets from the oral presentations. Dr. Schauer has those sheets for the BS/MS students, since those presentations served as your graduate seminars I believe, and Dr. Schauer is acting Graduate Advisor right now.
That's all for now...see you next week!
RK