Every year MSOE students work individually or with a group to complete a senior design project that solves a problem, improves a product or process, or develops something entirely new. This longstanding tradition allows students to showcase the skills they’ve honed over their academic career. A new tradition was added in 2022: the Senior Design Scholars Program.

The Senior Design Scholars Program is designed specifically for high school seniors who have been admitted to MSOE. During their final term of their senior year of high school, students get to participate on an MSOE senior design team and work on a real collegiate project. The program participants attend one of MSOE’s partner high schools or they are a member of a community partner organization such as All-In Milwaukee or the Boys and Girls Clubs of Milwaukee.

Not only does it provide the high school students with an inside look at what it’s like to work on a hands-on, college-level project, it also gives MSOE seniors the opportunity to serve as leaders and act as mentors to the prospective students. “Working in the Senior Design Scholars Program provided me with a unique opportunity to be mentored by seniors who were well versed in the particulars of engineering. The experience was inspiring and challenging,” said one high school participant.

This year there were eight scholars who participated on teams that were facilitated through the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department and Mechanical Engineering Department. The projects they worked on included:

• Rosie Education Dashboard: The team developed an application that enables visitors to interact with Rosie the supercomputer through hand-tracking and voice navigation.
• Intake Air Control of Retrofit Dryers in Guatemala: The team designed a mechanism to enhance the efficiency of cardamom dryers in Guatemala.
• Rockwell LVMCC Autonomous Guided Vehicle: The team created an autonomous unit capable of extracting and returning electrical pods from the low voltage motor control cabinets (LVMCCs) at Rockwell Automation.
• Data Science Practicum: Instead of working on a senior design team, this group of high school seniors attended a class on data science.

By working on these projects, the high school students developed cross cultural communication skills as well as strengthened their teambuilding and STEM skillsets. “Our team’s project has enhanced my understanding of STEM. My team members recognized my familiarity with coding and the technical process and tried to get me involved. This taught me about working with a team,” said a high school participant.

American Family Insurance committed funds to help offset the costs of the program, which includes a professional development stipend for MSOE faculty participants and a $1,000 scholarship for the prospective students to use should they enroll at MSOE.

The program provides valuable experiences for the high school students and enables them to build relationships with faculty members early on. “The teachers at Milwaukee School of Engineering are there to empower students and bring their ideas to the forefront. I am excited to be a part of the Senior Design Scholars, it has helped me dive into my freshman year,” said one high school student.

The Senior Design Scholars Program is coordinated by Dr. Mia Alexander-Snow and the Office of Campus Inclusion. The program further strengthens MSOE’s commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging (DEIB) by offering STEM experiences to historically underrepresented and underserved student populations.

Learn more about the Senior Design Scholars Program or read more about the senior design projects.