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MS&E 108 Senior Project

Five Fridays, 10:00 a.m. Econ 140
(Class times and location might be different for final presentations.)

Announcements

Teams have been assigned to presentation dates:
March 9: Teams 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 15, and 16
March 16: Teams 2, 3, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, and 14
Presentations will be in Econ 140 from 9:30 until around noon.

If you have a preference for final presentation date, please complete the date preference form by 11pm on Wednesday, February 8. If you do not complete the form by then, we assume that you can present on either date.

Each team must submit a Project Description Form by 11pm on Tuesday January 24.

If you represent an organization that might want to sponsor a project, please visit the Sponsors page.

Students, please do not wait until January to form your four-student team or to arrange for a project.
To report your team or for help finding a team or teammate(s), please visit the Teams page.

Seniors Majoring in MS&E,
MS&E 108, Senior Project, is required of all MS&E majors during their senior year, and is only offered during the Winter Quarter.
During the winter quarter, students will work in teams of four on public service and industrial consulting projects.
An organizational meeting will be held at noon on Thursday, December 1 in Thornton 110 for those students planning to take MS&E&E 108, Senior Project during Winter Quarter 2011-2012. The meeting will provide an opportunity to meet other students in the course and ask questions of the course faculty.
If you are unable to attend the meeting, you can obtain all of the information at this web site.
It is not too early to form your team and to develop any leads you may have for potential projects.

MS&E 108 Course Description

The course faculty this year are Sabina Alistar, Margaret Brandeau, Chuck Eesley, Riitta Katila, Jim Primbs, and Ross Shachter (course coordinator)
Faculty contact information is on the Contacts page.

This course is devoted completely to your senior project. You form four-person teams, preferably by December 2011, but no later than January 13, 2012. Each team is responsible for locating an organization with a project that can be approached using methodology learned in your MS&E courses. MS&E faculty have contacts at a number of local organizations with potential projects. Contact Prof. Shachter as soon as possible for details if you anticipate needing assistance identifying a project. (You must form and register a four-person team before requesting project leads.)

Your team will be assigned a faculty advisor who will serve as a combination consultant and taskmaster throughout the quarter, and who must approve your project. Both a written and an oral report are required. You should work with the Communications Program in the School of Engineering for help with your oral report. Finally, just as in the "real world," deadlines are crucial, and missing them bears consequences.

Standards for Professional Behavior

The course prepares our students for careers as professionals applying the concepts of management science. Students should think of 108 as training for the real world where tardiness and absences reflect on your qualifications. We expect professional behavior from students, including being proactive and assuming responsibility rather than making excuses for progress not made. Being punctual for meetings with your faculty advisor and industry clients, attending all class and group sessions, and delivering quality written materials on time are part of these norms. Your grade will reflect your ability to meet these norms.

Scheduled class meetings and weekly individual project team meetings with your team's faculty advisor will be held throughout the quarter. These meetings are not numerous, but they are very important. Each member of the class is expected to attend every scheduled class meeting and be on time.

Grades will be based primarily on the final oral and written reports, as evaluated by your faculty advisor. Advisors will take into account your contribution to the team's efforts, and your attendance at class and project team meetings.

Project Description

The Project Description is due by 11 p.m. on Tuesday January 24, 2012, submitted via the course web site. It describes the problem your team will be tackling, what you plan to do, and how you plan to do it, and it allows us to assign faculty advisors to teams. It contains the following sections:
  1. Project title;
  2. Administrative information (client organization; names, telephone numbers and emails of all team members and your organization contact);
  3. Statement or description of the problem, approaches you plan to use, and nature of the results you plan to deliver; and
  4. A schedule of 5-6 available meeting times (one hour blocks between 8am-6pm, Monday-Friday) when your entire team can meet with a faculty advisor. (Note that your team is assumed to be available during class time, Fridays 10 am to noon.)

Project Team Meetings

All teams will be responsible for scheduling weekly meetings with their faculty advisor at a mutually convenient time. All team members are expected to attend each meeting. In preparation for each meeting, your team should email a one or two page summary at least 24 hours prior to the meeting, copying everyone on the team. The summary should contain these items:
  1. A review of work accomplished since the last meeting,
  2. A description of what work will be done next, and
  3. A list of questions and issues to be discussed at the meeting.
To facilitate preparation for your team's meeting with your faculty advisor, you should schedule a second, working meeting with your team once each week, several days prior to the meeting with your faculty advisor.

Written Report

You submit your final written report to your faculty advisor (in hardcopy), the oclient organization, and the course archives. Your written report should contain these items:

Please use at least 1.5 line spacing and reasonable font size for readability; number body pages 1, 2 . . . and Appendix pages A-1, B-1, B-2, C-1 . . . and use those numbers when referring to material in an Appendix.

There is no minimum or maximum number of pages in the body of the report or in the appendices. Typical reports will have a body length of between 10 and 20 pages and between 5 and 15 pages of Appendix material.

Discuss the content with your faculty advisor. Ideally, you should prepare sections of the report (e.g., project description, methods, etc.) as you progress along the project timeline. Your grade will almost surely suffer if you leave all the writing to the end.

The written report will comprise the majority of your course grade, as modified by your attendance and contribution to the project's success. In grading reports, faculty advisors evaluate both technical content and presentation style (including such things as appropriate organization, use of headings, clear explanations and charts, and absence of grammatical errors or misspellings). The report should clearly reflect the effort you exerted during the quarter as well as the quality of your solution; in other words, it should represent your achievement. You may ask your advisor to discuss with you specifics of what he or she expects in the context of your particular project.

You should submit the final written report to your faculty advisor, your client organization, and the course archives by the last day of class (March 16, 2012).

Oral Presentation

Near the end of the quarter, each team will make a 12-minute oral presentation to the class. All team members should participate equally, both in time and effort. You must finalize your presentation by 5:00 p.m. on Thursday before the start of Oral Presentations, and submit it to the course archives. We'll load all presentations onto a single laptop to avoid delays between presentations. Bring your presentation to class on a memory stick as a backup. Dress code is business professional, such as suits.

Please inform the people you have worked with at the client organization that they are welcome to attend our final oral presentations. They truly enjoy being invited, being introduced to the class, and listening to the results of projects. You also may offer to present your findings to the organization.

All teams are expected to schedule and attend at least two tutorials with the staff of the School of Engineering's Oral Communication Program in the Terrace level of the Huang Engineering Center. The first tutorial should be at least a week before your presentation in class. The second tutorial should be at least three days before your talk. Additional tutorials (in which your team could be videotaped) are highly recommended.

Every year Accenture sponsors monetary awards to be split between the top two senior project oral presentations in MS&E 108. A panel of judges will determine the winning teams based solely on the oral presentations, and the awards will be presented at commencement. Criteria for judging the presentations include ample motivation for the problem, clarity of exposition, sufficient support for the methodology, clear explanation of the results, degree to which the client might be expected to be satisfied, and soundness of presentation skills (e.g., appropriate organization, good visual aids, proper pacing and pitch, professional demeanor, and so forth).