The Vertically Integrated Projects (VIP) engage undergraduate students in long-term, large-scale, multidisciplinary project teams that are led by faculty. VIP courses are project-based, team-based courses directly supporting faculty research and scholarship. VIPs under this course number have a particular focus on engineering topics, with team membership coming from across RIT’s colleges. Each VIP team has large-scale and multi-faceted objectives in research, design, entrepreneurship, and/or community outreach & service. A VIP faculty advises each VIP team composed of 2nd through 5th year students, with each student participating from one to three years. VIP teams generally can, and will, also include Graduate students at the Masters and PhD levels. New VIP students learn from and replace those who graduate by engaging in peer-to-peer learning and mentorship which sustains each VIP team beyond any one student. The teams are: Multidisciplinary - drawing students from different disciplines on campus; Vertically-integrated - maintaining a mix of sophomores through PhD students each semester; Long-term - each undergraduate student may participate in a project for up to three years. Students taking the 200-level course will: build basic knowledge/skills related to the project and begin making meaningful contributions. Students will be required to make basic contributions to the project through fundamental engineering activities, maintain detailed notebooks describing their contribution to the project, attend and participate in team meetings, learn about topics specific to each VIP via tutorials and readings from appropriate literature, and participate in reporting and presentations.

Topics and subject areas that are not among the courses listed here are frequently offered under the special topics title. Under the same title also may be found experimental courses that may be offered for the first time. Such courses are offered in a formal format; that is, regularly scheduled class sessions with an instructor. The level of complexity is commensurate with an undergraduate engineering course at the 200 level.

The Vertically Integrated Projects (VIP) engage undergraduate students in long-term, large-scale, multidisciplinary project teams that are led by faculty. VIP courses are project-based, team-based courses directly supporting faculty research and scholarship. VIPs under this course number have a particular focus on engineering topics, with team membership coming from across RIT’s colleges. Each VIP team has large-scale and multi-faceted objectives in research, design, entrepreneurship, and/or community outreach & service. A VIP faculty advises each VIP team composed of 2nd through 5th year students, with each student participating from one to three years. VIP teams generally can, and will, also include Graduate students at the Masters and PhD levels. New VIP students learn from and replace those who graduate by engaging in peer-to-peer learning and mentorship which sustains each VIP team beyond any one student. The teams are: Multidisciplinary - drawing students from different disciplines on campus; Vertically-integrated - maintaining a mix of sophomores through PhD students each semester; Long-term - each undergraduate student may participate in a project for up to three years. Students taking the 400-level course will: have technical foundations within their discipline, pursue needed knowledge/skills independently as-needed, make meaningful contributions, assume technical/leadership responsibilities, and serve as mentors for junior members. Students will be required to make significant contributions to the project, maintain detailed notebooks describing their contribution to the project, attend and participate in team meetings, learn about topics specific to each VIP via tutorials and readings from appropriate literature, and participate in reporting and presentations.

In this alternative capstone project course, students from diverse disciplines work in collaboration with community partners on projects that are defined and supported by residents with community organizations in Rochester and around the world. Community organizations have extensive knowledge about their environment, passion for their work, power to make change in the lives of individuals and their community, and the ability to inspire others…but have not typically enjoyed as much access to the resources of Universities as industry and government. This course seeks to strengthen connections and build relationships between the University and community groups. Students receive team coaching from a Collaborative Community Capstone guide as well as advising from an expert in their discipline as they work on their project. The traditional capstone experiences of teamwork, planning, project management and application of disciplinary learning are supplemented by coaching around best practices for authentic community engagement that is sensitive to cultural, economic and power differentials, grows trusting relationships, and promotes project outcomes that support community wellbeing. In this course, students will gain strategies and confidence in working with diverse partners using democratic principles, consider the ethical and social implications of their civic participation and professional work, and join an inspirational team of people working together for a better world—all while completing their capstone requirements. Each semester the course will follow a Plan, Do, Check, Act, Reflect process. Students taking the course as an alternative to Multidisciplinary Senior Design will take the course twice, doing additional work on the same project.

This is the first in a two-course sequence oriented to the solution of real-world engineering design problems. This is a capstone learning experience that integrates engineering theory, principles, and processes within a collaborative environment. Multidisciplinary student teams follow a systems engineering design process, which includes assessing customer needs, developing engineering specifications, generating and evaluating concepts, choosing an approach, developing the details of the design, and implementing the design to the extent feasible, for example by building and testing a prototype or implementing a chosen set of improvements to a process. This first course focuses primarily on defining the problem and developing the design and may include elements of build/ implementation. The second course may include elements of design and focuses on build/implementation and communicating information about the final design.

This course helps students develop a system of holistic thinking about engineering pursuits which includes the natural environment, humans as individuals, economics, culture, institutions, policies, and civil society. Topics include research, design, dissemination, and evaluation techniques of the Human Centered Design Methodology (also called Design Thinking), Systems Practice tools for understanding complex problems, comparison of competing economic viewpoints, and evaluation of project case studies for triple bottom line sustainability. The course will include an extensive community engaged experiential learning component with a community partner in the city of Rochester which requires periodic travel to the partner’s site for interviews and activities. The course project is intended to lead to ideas that can be continued into social impact design capstone projects for implementation.

Are you passionate about addressing the socially-complex, wicked problems of our time? This interdisciplinary, active-learning course will lay the groundwork for students who want to participate in future place-based community-engaged research, development or design projects that build on community strengths and address community determined challenges. Through literature reviews, discussions, cases study analysis, role plays, debates, reflective writing, and visits with experienced community practitioners, we will explore the larger context of the systems within which we live and how others have engaged in efforts to improve community wellbeing both locally and globally. We will strive for a more nuanced understanding of our world and its power dynamics from various perspectives. We will investigate the context in which community and economic development has traditionally occurred, how technology has been involved, and the effects of projects and activities on the “beneficiaries”. We will investigate best practices including mindsets, worldviews, skills, processes, and tools for community-driven positive change. Finally we will use all our learnings to develop our own evaluation framework and apply it to a current community project. This course incorporates humanities and social science approaches and counts for general education requirements.