Senior Design X 4

A hallmark of a Columbia Engineering education is the senior capstone course, also known as “senior design"--an opportunity for students to leverage all they’ve learned while at Columbia. This year-long project brings together student teams to identify a problem and create an innovative solution or prototype that incorporates the fundamentals of engineering. Students celebrated the end of their senior capstone with a showcase for peers and faculty held in the spring at Carleton Commons and at the Zuckerman Institute.

This year–across the 50 teams working together on a variety of engineering challenges–one commonality stood out among them: diversity of expertise. Students expressed the importance of collaboration and how learning from each other helped shape and execute their projects. The capstone amplifies how engineering is a truly interdisciplinary field, and that a big part of thinking outside of the box is working with colleagues who bring different skills and expertise to the table.

In this video, four teams– MOBY, ParkinPlay, Thimble, and The Vermont Recreational Center with On-Site Wastewater Treatment–walk us through their projects. These projects exemplify how a breakthrough solution to an engineering problem requires multiple components, varying skill sets, and teamwork. The team members were all inspired to fulfill Columbia’s vision to engineer for humanity, working towards a larger mission that goes beyond problem-solving.

“It’s not just making the easiest solution to a problem or the coolest thing you can do, but really identifying why you are there to fix the problem,” said senior Tiffany Qian. “You’re combining not just your knowledge to make the design itself, but thinking about the people using it and the impacts that [it] will have in the long term.”