Senior thesis offers students an opportunity to exercise their abilities and explore the process of designing a building.  Throughout the year, students can apply knowledge from previous courses to fulfill thesis requirements.  By using a real building, students may confront unique challenges not covered in other courses or textbooks. In this way, thesis can help to build a student's engineering judgment prior to entering the industry.

 

The amount of benefit from senior thesis is entirely dependent on the student's effort.  Personally, I feel that I benefited from senior thesis because I wanted to explore the design process of a real building, and the building I had truly interested me.  However, I also noticed that the requirements for senior thesis were not very well defined or always enforced.  Thus, students must take the initiative to learn on their own.  This set-up can work for those who take responsibility for their own work. However, frustrations can also arise when a student does not feel motivated due to a lack of order or clear direction.  If I were to change anything about senior thesis, I would request the following: more feedback from first semester work and more clarification on the requirements for second semester submissions.

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That being said, I am glad I took part in this program.  I feel that I now have a better sense of the holistic design process of a building.  I also feel that I have grown my engineering judgment significantly.  Engineering judgment is arguably the most valuable asset an engineer can have.  Practicing with textbook problems can only take your knowledge so far.  The rest of what engineers need to know must be learned by doing.