Skip to main content

Senior Design Student Quick Guide

Last updated: August 12, 2023

This page is meant as a quick guide for my student teams to help clarify expectations and facilitate a smooth project experience. Think of this page a a supplement to the syllabus for teams that have me as their advisor. It will be updated periodically.

General Info​

Contact Info: Please use my university email for all communication. That will be shared via official university channels.

Preferred Contact Method: Email (my university email). Do not use the "email" feature in WebCourses. I will not receive those in a timely fashion. If I don't respond to an email within 24 hours, please follow up.

Office hours: My office hours info can be found here. That page will always contain the most up-to-date info.

My Advising Philosophy​

I approach senior design advising with the mentality that you are professional entry-level engineers. This means I will treat you with same respect I would give to any other colleague. The advisor-advisee relationship is intended to more closely align with mentoring that instructing.

What should we call you? Josh. My general approach to working with students is to treat you like colleagues, not students. What you call me sets a tone for the advising relationship. If you were working with me professionally, we'd be on a first name basis. I believe not expecting the same here sets the wrong tone.

Feedback. I will give you feedback throughout the semester. Sometimes it's hard to hear that feedback, but keep in mind it always intended to be constructive. It is given to help you grow as engineers and professionals.

Feedback goes both ways. Just as I give you feedback, I welcome it in return. As long as you do so politely and professionally, your feedback of my advising, the project, or the program more broadly can go a long way towards the continuous improvement of the capstone experience. I may also be a useful resource to provide some filtered unbiased feedback to your peers.

Role of an Advisor​

What I am:

  • Advisor, mentor, and coach
  • Guide you in the application of engineering design methodology to your project and lead you towards discovery and learning (not give you answers)

What I am not:

  • Your manager. Your project is your responsibility. I will not be assigning tasks or managing individuals.
  • The instructor. I am here to support the topics you will be learning from in-class instruction. I am not here to replace it. You are expected to attend class and pay attention to lectures and other course content.
  • A subject matter expert on all things technical. I have expertise in certain areas (see below) and many areas in which I lack expertise. It cannot be my role to teach you the technical areas of your project. You are expected to rely on your engineering foundational knowledge, research, and ability to apply self-learning skills to develop the knowledge and skills for your project.

My Background​

Educational Background

  • M.S. in Space Systems Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, 2018
  • B.S. in Aerospace Engineering, University of Central Florida, 2014

Technical expertise: Software/systems engineering, system architecture, web applications (full-stack), cloud computing, application security, infrastructure as code, continuous integration and delivery, embedded computing.

Non-technical expertise: Project management and execution, agile methodologies, scrum, scaled-agile, project planning, risk management.

My Expectations​

YOU are responsible for your project and your individual performance. My approach is to treat you like entry-level engineers. With that comes a certain professional trust and responsibility - I am here to mentor you, not manage you.

I am, however, also responsible for evaluating you. The most complex portion of that evaluation comes in the form of your ICF (Individual Contribution Factor). We describe factors contributing to your ICF in the course syllabus as follows:

Individual weekly reports, impromptu and formal communications (both oral and written), instructor observations and team member peer evaluations are major elements that will be used to determine your ICF. The quality and timeliness of your contributions will be used to evaluate your team participation.

This ultimately means showing up, showing up on time, and showing up with tangible and meaningful contributions to your team. This includes every aspect of the course; internal team meetings, advising meetings, lectures, sponsor meetings, design reviews, etc. I have previously written an article on Guidelines for Project Success that outlines the non-technical factors that play a role in project success. My assessment of your ICF is heavily influenced by these factors.

If it becomes apparent during final reports or peer evaluations that there there were performance issues that were not identified earlier, that will be reflected in your ICF. Even if there was not an opportunity for early feedback, you are ultimately responsible for your performance. You are encouraged to make every effort to ensure there are opportunities for feedback.

Some Suggestions​

I'd encourage everyone in senior design to set up one or two one-on-one brief check-ins with me during office hours. This gives an opportunity for me to better get to know each person individually, understand where things are going well or going poorly, and how I can better advise you and your team. It is also an environment were concerns about individual or peer performance can be addressed.

Read my Guidelines for Project Success article to understand the non-technical behaviors that factor in to performance evaluation.

Useful Resources​

I strongly encourage the use of a digital task tracker. My preferred tool is Jira. I have written a tutorial on Creating a Scrum Project in Jira that will walk you through the setup. Other good alternatives are Microsoft Planner, Asana, and Trello.

For project scheduling, Microsoft Project sets the bar for Gantt charting tools. Given its cost, most teams have found GanttProject to be a good alternative - this would be my recommendation for senior design teams. ProjectLibre is another viable alternative.

For diagramming, I prefer Diagrams.net (formerly Draw.io).