Welcome to Kevin Engel's AE Senior Thesis e-Portfolio
Reflection
Course Reflection
Senior thesis was an experience unlike any other in college. It lasted an entire year and was worth 8 credits. The work began over the summer leading up to the fifth year with a building selection, securing plans and specs, and obtaining the permission of the building owner or their representative. Then, the technical assignments throughout the fall semester provided the opportunity to scrutinize every detail of the plans. The fall concluded with a written proposal for the research and analyses to be conducted during the spring.
The spring semester consisted of a lot of time spent contacting industry members and doing online research in an effort to gain as much information as possible about our research topics. This was followed by an intense couple of weeks of writing and editing as well as performing breadth analyses.
Overall the course was a good opportunity to learn something on our own, rather than learning through the typical lecture and homework format of most classes. It also provided valuable training in the areas of time management and scheduling because there were relatively few deadlines within the semester. It forced people to create a workable plan and stick to it, even if there were a few setbacks along the way.
CPEP Reflection
Although I did not have any knowledge of how to create or edit a website prior to this year, having a template made it relatively easy to keep my site up to date and post my information as I finished it. This was a great opportunity to learn basic website maintenace.
At the completion of thesis, several friends and family members have been asking to see my thesis and having everything posted to a website made it easy for me to send them the link and allow them to browse through the information. This made it a valuable tool in sharing my information.
Overall, using the CPEP website to organize and display my information has been a positive experience wich has taught me a lot of things that I may be able to use in the next few years as I leave school and begin working in the "real world."