BACHELOR OF SCIENCE IN ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING
SENIOR PROJECT
Every student working for a BS in EE or in CompE is required to do a Senior Project. (For students in the BS/MS Honors program, the MS thesis substitutes for this requirement.) Each student is required to register for a 3-credit project course and 1 credit of project planning and presentation. Ideally, the student should participate in a ½-credit planning/presentation course (EE 261 for EE, or EE271 for CompE) during the semester before doing the project work. Students planning to do independent projects can find a topic and an adviser during that semester. Students who have taken EE 261 or 271 then take the ½-credit EE 262 (or EE272) at the same time as the 3-credit project course. (Alternatively, a 1-credit planning/presentation EE 260 (or EE270) planning/presentation course can be taken during the semester of project work.)
PROJECT MODES:
A senior project may be course related or independent. Some courses that require an extensive individual project may be used to satisfy the senior project requirement. Current examples include EL 930 - Wireless Communication Lab and EL 644 - VLSI System and Architecture Design. [Students contemplating either of these courses should plan to take the necessary pre-requisites in advance.]
To do an individual project, the student may propose a project and find a professor who is willing to supervise the student's work on that project. Alternatively, the student may select first, second and third choices of projects from a list of projects proposed by department faculty. The department will publish the list of projects, as well as dates for submission of student requests and the date for announcement of the matching of students to projects.
PROJECT SCOPE AND CONTENT:
There is a great range in the types of projects that are acceptable. Examples of past projects can be examined from the links on the left side of this page.
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Ideally, the senior project should involve the design, construction and testing of an engineering device, system or software package that integrates concepts learned in earlier courses, serves a useful purpose and addresses practical design considerations such as cost, size, weight, power consumption, safety, and reliability. The student should plan on spending 10 hours per week on the project, including meetings with the faculty project supervisor. Several cycles of testing and redesign should be anticipated due to inevitable problems such as lack of availability of parts, errors in modelling assumptions, unrealistic specifications, etc. Completion of a working model of the device or system that was the original goal, though desirable, is not required. Success in the course is based on the diligence and thoughtfulness applied to overcoming problems encountered in the design process, and on the presentation of the plans, problems, alternative approaches and results.
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Senior Project
