Design 4 Practice

Putting the practice back into curriculum

D4P history

The Design4Practice program was developed in 1994, and was originally intended as a team-taught class that simulated a corporate environment.  The classes were multi-disciplinary in that each engineering student regardless of engineering fields participated in the classes.  The instructors came from all the engineering fields.  The intent was to provide a series of design classes where students would integrate their technical skills learned in their discipline and apply them to team based design challenges.  As NAU has grown from a smaller teaching college to a larger research based institution , the Design4Practice program has evolved to meet the changing needs of the industry and society at large.

The D4P program

The Design4Practice (D4P) program is a four-class sequence culminating in the senior capstone experience.  The D4P courses are designed to prepare students for an environment that requires the synthesis of technical knowledge, skills, and creative problem-solving.  The four “pillars” of the D4P Program are: 1) Engineering Design, 2) Communication, 3) Teamwork, and 4) Professionalism.

Program Objectives

The Design4Practice Program is founded on the following objectives:

• To produce engineering graduates who can creatively apply technical skills to effectively solve problems
• To explicitly teach engineering students to integrate technical skills obtained in their engineering curriculum into the overall design process
• To cultivate the collaborative skills necessary to be successful
• To develop the communication skills necessary to be successful
• To ensure students understand the design process