Twice a year, Western Michigan University students in the College of Engineering get the chance to show what they have learned during their time at college during the Conference on Senior Engineering Design.
The projects ranged from an exoskeletal robot arm control system to an item that was designed to be a better ankle-gapping device to aid ankle sprains.
The conference was held on Tuesday, Dec. 8 between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. at the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences campus.
All of the projects were set into specific time slots and divided based on what department of engineering the topic was.
Each of the presentations was 30 minutes in length, and the senior engineering students had to memorize their presentation.
Another purpose of the event is to get students interested in the engineering field.
“It’s actually kind of a good recruitment, especially for high school students. We try to encourage some of the high schools to come to give them an idea of how the engineering college works,” said Tamara Bergman, an organizer of the event and office associate at the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences.
“It also shows them through some of the projects and presentations that kind of gives them an idea of what engineering really is about.”
Another integral aspect of the event is to show incoming engineering students what the program has in store for them.
Students who are studying in the field of engineering will also have to do a presentation at the end of their senior year, so attending this event can be beneficial to them.
“We are going to have to do it in the future, so we’ll be here [presenting] next year basically,” said Kim Harms, a junior.
“From what I know in industry, we can expect to do this for our employers and the people we are hired to work for so this is basically just good practice.”
Melanie Zalenski who is a senior at WMU feels the same way about the importance of the event being that it helps current engineering students, as well letting other students know what engineering students do.
“As engineering students, they need to see what is in store for them because four years from now they are going to be doing the exact same thing so you’d really get an idea of what’s to come,” said Zalenski.
“Anyone on campus would benefit by coming to see what their fellow students are doing in their college.”
Zalenski, one of the presenting students, was part of researching Predictive Modeling of Digital and Print Media.
The presentation was primarily about how a college newspaper could increase its total revenue through advertising, and focused on using mathematics models and simulation to predict a newspaper’s total advertisement revenue.
WMU alumnus Brandon Spence said that the project is important to a student’s future and also for people to view the different kinds of engineering.
“[The presentation] is a culmination of the work they’ve put into it,” he said.
“You get to see what all different departments work on what they do and it’s kind of a learning experience to see all of the different programs and projects and see how they tackle the problems and their task.”
