(560e) Enhancing the Design Experience in the Junior and Senior Year At Villanova

In this presentation, efforts to improve the design component in the junior and senior year at Villanova University will be discussed.  The current curriculum includes a single-semester design class, and prior to this project, students were not exposed to process simulation tools until the design course.  We will discuss how experiences with process simulation software and equipment design were incorporated into junior year courses, including thermodynamics, heat transfer, reaction engineering and mass transfer. Tools such as self-paced assignments and student guides were used, to avoid detracting from the existing technical content of the classes.  Problems were selected to complement course content or to emphasize the practical importance of course content. The impact of these experiences on student preparedness in the fall semester design course and their ability to address more complex design issues will be discussed. Student impressions regarding their experiences and improvements to incorporate in the next class cycle will also be presented.