National Competition and Community Engagement in a Civil Engineering Timber Bridge Capstone Project

Abstract

A capstone course is an integral part of Civil Engineering (CE) undergraduate education. It requires graduating students to apply knowledge and skills gained from courses in a CE curriculum in a design that mimics 'real world' projects. The scope and level of detail in senior projects can vary noticeably. This paper presents a senior design project in which a group of five students built a pedestrian timber bridge for a local community and participated in the 2019 National Timber Bridge Design Competition. Valuable lessons were learned from both student and faculty perspectives.