Scott Kirkpatrick, Physics
Ashley Bernal, Mechanical
Engineering
Anneliese Watt, Professional
Communication
Students earn 12 credits, across 3 courses, meeting objectives
for each simultaneously
RH330 Communication Objectives
ME497 Technical Elective Objectives
• Analyzing contexts, audiences, and
genres to determine how they
influence communication;
• Provide strategies and practice for
design development
•Increase Understanding of
Energy and Mass Principles
• Applying a systems approach to
develop an innovative design for
utilizing solar energy
•Understanding pressure-volume
relationships
• Crafting documents to meet the
demands and constraints of
professional situations;
• Integrating all stages of the writing
process, ethically and persuasively,
to respond to technical contexts
and audiences—from planning,
researching and drafting to
designing, revising and editing;
and
• Collaborating effectively within
and across teams with overlapping
interests.
• Learning to approach design
problems and alternatives broadly
and creatively; for example,
broadening and deepening
concepts and understanding of
solar power
• Utilizing best manufacturing
practices in design development,
including in the choice of materials
• Understanding and meeting
challenges associated with
addressing stakeholder needs from
different cultures/environments, in
this case Kenyan.
PH490 Science Elective Objectives
•Utilizing heat flow for power
conversion
•Understanding energy efficiency
and constraints
•Exploring the relationships among
heat, light, and electrical and
mechanical energy
Course Resides at the Intersection among Engineering, Science, and Humanities
Theoretical
calculations
Math
relationships
used to design
and predict
device
behavior
Students
investigate, design,
create and
communicate
interdependent
components
Stakeholders
Instill a
sense of
social and
economic
community
to the
world
Math applied
to real world to
create
relationships
Interdisciplinary co-teaching Analytical and
Interpretative
models
Culture
Communication
Humanities
Project theme taken from
National Academy of
Engineering (NAE) Grand
Challenge
http://www.engineeringchallenges.org
Design, build, test,
communicate an
inexpensive and locally
manufacturable system
powered by solar energy.
Locally= on campus and in
Kenya
“… But exploiting the sun’s power is not without challenges. Overcoming the barriers to
widespread solar power generation will require engineering innovations in several
arenas — for capturing the sun’s energy, converting it to useful forms, and storing it for
use when the sun itself is obscured.”