Work in progress — Implementing and evaluating efforts to engage interdisciplinary teams to solve real-world design challenges

Young engineers entering an industry job are likely to be immediately placed into a division or team that is comprised of people from a wide variety of educational backgrounds. This will include other engineering disciplines and, depending on the industry, individuals with business, marketing, public relations, policy or science backgrounds. This work in progress describes our initial efforts to implement and evaluate outcomes from collaboratively teaching capstone design and assigning interdisciplinary teams to solve real-world design challenges as part of the course. Initial data demonstrate that these teams are more successful than their single discipline counterparts in achieving outstanding success in their projects as indicated by a larger proportion of interdisciplinary teams earning design awards, both local and national.