From Capstone to Cornerstone: A New Paradigm for Design Education*

This paper proposes a new role for the traditional capstone design course that culminates manyundergraduate engineering curricula. We envision the outcome of the capstone experience servingas the cornerstone for an integrated sequence of design projects throughout the curriculum. In thispaper we describe the benefits of this approach to students, faculty, the university, and industrialclients. While this paper describes how this transformation could be accomplished in the Mechan-ical Engineering Department at the University of Washington, we believe that it has similarpotential in other departments and universities.