Senior Design/Technical Resource Committee

October 9, 2014 Report

Active Members for 2014 include:

 Randy Foster - Chair  Randy Frank- Vice Chair

2013-2014 Activities and Accomplishments:

 Implementation of video participation capability for MAE student design reviews and final design showcase

Participation by video has been extremely low to nonexistent since it was initiated during last December 13th’s ME261 Design Showcase presentations. We do have a continued good level of support on-site by several of our members at these events and this is highly appreciated by everyone. Continuation of the video capability was discussed during the August board meeting. During this meeting the operational cost of making this available was discussed. There was some debate among the board members as to what the actual additional costs were rather than an allocated cost assigned to the activity of having the WebEx available. Further discussion is warranted at the October board meeting.

2014-2015 Strategic Plan Objectives:

 Class Project Support/Sponsorship

There is a continuing need for having sufficient projects sponsored for the ME261 student teams. Once again we found ourselves with some late and unavoidable cancellations of sponsored external projects. Budgetary concerns by the sponsors have caused some planned projects to be canceled. A plea for last minute projects was avoided as there was just enough available projects including some sponsored by the MAE department. A plan for having a back-up projects (to cover last minute cancellations) should be considered.

 The Fall 2104 Semester

This semester the ME261 class has 19 teams (comprised of 15 teams with 5 members each and 4 teams with 4 members each). Project sponsors for this semester are:

Faurecia xWorks Orscheln Products (two projects)

Two projects are from the MAE department

2014-2015 Budget Considerations:

 None

Respectfully submitted,

Randy Foster Chairman, Senior Design/Technical Resource Committee