Senior Project
The senior project is a culminating experience of an LAES student’s education and is required by Cal Poly to complete a baccalaureate degree. The senior project should clearly demonstrate the skillsets acquired by the LAES student with fairly equal representations of what the student has learned from her/his Engineering and Liberal Arts concentrations. Specifically, students will have the ability to:
- Reduce a topic to specific points of analysis.
- Organize the points of analysis into a logical sequence.
- Apply acquired competencies to the successful completion of a project.
- Obtain, evaluate, synthesize, and apply project-related information.
- Develop and follow a project plan.
- Estimate hours of labor and/or cost of materials necessary to complete a project.
- Organize, illustrate, and write clear, concise project documentation.
- Accept supervision when needed.
LAES students should follow these five key steps during the senior project process:
1. Registering for Senior Project Independent Study Courses
Requirements: LAES students must have Senior status to enroll in senior project courses and have a project proposal submitted 2 weeks before classes begin.
Offered: Although schedules are subject to change, both courses are offered in the fall, winter, and spring quarters.
LAES 461 and LAES 462 are a two-course sequence, meaning that the 462 capstone course builds upon work done in 461 and finishes with a professional review presentation.
Students are highly recommended to take LAES 462 immediately following LAES 461 to complete and submit projects for the final professional review presentation in time for graduation.
The Senior Project Proposal
All students must submit a proposal before enrollment. The specifics of the proposal will vary according to the project. However, the proposal should be approximately 1 page (no more than two) and should include the following components:
- A clear, concise statement of the problem the project is intended to solve.
- An outline of the general scope of the work, including specific anticipated milestones, deliverables, and a tentative schedule.
- A list of any special equipment or facilities that will be needed.
- A description of how the proposed project will satisfy the criteria outlined above.
If you struggle to develop an idea, remember the classes you have already been in. Now imagine an assignment you wish you had been given, or perhaps think about a skill set you wanted to acquire but didn't with that class or one you would've liked to study more in-depth. These ideas can become perfect candidates for a proposal.
Have you worked on assignments individually or in a team that you wish you had more time to work on? Students can also collaborate with their peers if they wish to do so. Proposals for group projects should also address the following:
- The division of responsibilities among group members.
- A means of evaluating the individual contribution of each member.
Your Senior Project proposal is due before LAES 461 registration. Please e-mail your proposal to the instructor at least two weeks BEFORE registration begins.
Once the instructor approves your proposal, you can contact the LAES department to register for the course and request a permission number.
2. Class Presentations
The meeting schedule for this class differs from the officially posted schedule. The courses are mainly asynchronous, so students do not regularly meet. Meetings occur virtually using Zoom three times during the quarter, where students show their work progress. Minimally, you must attend a 20–30-minute window during the time blocks reserved for presentations. Students are highly encouraged to attend all presentations to hear the feedback provided at the end of each presentation, as all comments likely pertain to their work as well. Having everyone attend each other's presentations includes support for fellow LAES students and strengthens our LAES community. We understand some of you will have time conflicts, but please try to attend as much as possible.
Our meetings each quarter are:
1) Initial Presentations, Week 3
2) Mid-Quarter Presentations, Week 6
3) Senior Project I Final Presentations, Week 10
4) Senior Project II Final Presentations, Finals Week
3. Senior Project Paper
Your senior project report is due at the end of LAES 462 and will determine most of your grade. All LAES 461 and LAES 462 activities are designed to help you create this report. You will write the report as an official academic paper. You should assume two kinds of readers of your report: 1) sophomore-level LAES students taking the same concentrations as you, informing them how to combine their concentrations into a singular design and development project; 2) potential future employer who has asked you to explain your Senior project for LAES as a way of finding out how you solve problems, and as a way for you to demonstrate competency with both the liberal arts and the engineering portions of your studies.
4. Final Project Submission Requirements
Upload your Senior Project paper to the DigitalCommons@CalPoly site, following the Cal Poly Senior Research Project Guidelines.
Important Note: To receive your grade, you must forward your Senior Project e-mail confirmation to your instructor by the stated due date. If the instructor does not receive this confirmation within the stated timeframe, you will receive an "I" (incomplete) grade for the class.
When your submission is complete, your project will be available in the LAES section of the DigitalCommons@CalPoly site.
Seeds in STEM
Providing STEM education to 5th-12th grade Santa Maria students
Project Description: Generation STEM was started as a LAES senior project and remains handed off for continuation. The program teaches Elementary School students in Santa Maria lessons from block coding to engineering design. Full STEAM Ahead is a day when TRIO students can come to Cal Poly to learn about different engineering disciplines and organizations on campus. The goal is to inspire students to pursue engineering and see the different disciplines that fall into STEM.
The SOS Project
Installation art piece on the effects of gun violence in the U.S.
Project Description: The SOS Project was developed in response to the 2016 Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida. The installation formed an arc of linked plexiglass panels, each representing two years between 2004 and 2016. Several holes pierced the individual panels, each hole representing a school shooting that had occurred in the U.S. during the given period. Visitors were encouraged to contemplate and discuss the impact of gun violence on their own lives. Written across the inner panels was the question: "How many school shootings have there been in America during the last 12 years?"
For more information: https://sosbooth.wordpress.com/
San Luis Obispo Mini-Maker Faire
Community event encouraging people to learn, make, invent, build, think, and play
Project Description: This highly successful community event, supported by MAKE magazine and the MAKE Community Development Group, attracted more than 2,000 visitors to downtown San Luis Obispo.
Working in collaboration with:
- The San Luis Obispo Museum of Art
- A consortium of K-12 STEM educators
- Faculty from the Cal Poly College of Engineering (especially Dr. Kathy Chen from Materials Engineering)
- SLO city planners
- Local commercial partners and sponsors (including iFixit)
- Dr. Thomas Fowler and his architecture studio students
- LAES program and the Center for Expressive Technologies (provided technical, planning, and site management support for SLO's inaugural Mini-Maker Faire)
Orchesis Dance Company
Creation of an immersive dance space using interactive screen-based design to represent embodied media
Project Description: The dancing images moved from the screens directly onto the dancers themselves. The final performance was a thirteen-minute modern interpretation of tango, with screens suspended above and behind the dancers. A video triptych of the dancers dancing in a wide range of venues was projected onto the screens, all pre-recorded and mixed live to interact with the dancers on the stage. We used performance tracking systems, heart-beat monitors, and highly flexible projection screens that the dancers could wear during the performance.
Learn more about the Orchesis Dance Company's Shift (links open in new windows):
Music Rehearsal VR
Student senior projects allow individuals to explore their own musical skills as well as those of others
Project Description: LAES student senior projects used VR to create a way for individuals to explore the musical world.
In one project, users can play their instrument simultaneously with others and rehearse at the same time while in different spaces. To demonstrate this, the students made three versions of themselves, playing three different music pieces they composed.
In another senior project, a user can take a tour with a 360-degree view of the campus. In the video, the Cal Poly Acapella Choir sings. With each line of the song, the user and choir are transported to a different area on campus. The VR user can also lean closer to individual singers in the choir, and that person will sing louder.
The HO:ME Project
Development of sustainable housing for low-income residents of San Luis Obispo County
Project Description: The ultimate goal of the documentation work was to create a model for how this successful building collaborative could be replicated in other communities around the US and abroad. The emphasis was on the efficient reuse of materials, built upon the benefits of having a university system working directly with local government to improve the local community.
More than 100 students worked on this project, including students in Architectural Studio, Media Arts, and Interdisciplinary Studies courses. LAES students carried forward the project's documentation, focusing on the construction materials involved and the political and social management issues associated with developing the project in a public context. They also continued to help organize and fine-tune the collaboration between the city, the university, and the builders.
Film School Africa
Harnessing the power of film to change lives forever
Project Goals: Equip students to work in the booming South African film industry and use film as art therapy.
Project Description: Cal Poly students spent two weeks in Cape Town, Africa, working with a group called Film School Africa to learn how film can help people get out of poverty. Students used donated appliances to build a replicated township house that could be used as a sound studio. The sets were built inside a repurposed chicken coop that used transparent ceiling panels so that videos could be filmed using daylight instead of electricity. Another section of the chicken coop was renovated to be a sound studio. This set could be continuously used by the students at Film School Africa even after the two-week period.
