Fall 2026
First in a two-course sequence for the capstone senior design experience; formation of a senior design team, visitation with the team sponsor, preparation of the groundwork for the project, preparation of the project charter and collection or acquisition of initial set of data; provision of instructions on different aspects of capstone design, including ethics, design constraints, applicable standards, project management, report writing specifications and requirements, and oral and visual presentations.
Topics: Course overview; expectations and deliverables; strong data engineering capstones; two-course sequence; examples from prior projects.
Activities: Skills inventory; student introductions; domain interest survey.
Deliverable: Individual interest statement.
Topics: Interdisciplinary teamwork; team roles; sponsor communication etiquette; stakeholder expectations.
Activities: Team formation; sponsor/project selection; initial sponsor meeting preparation.
Deliverables: Team roster; sponsor contact plan.
Topics: Engineering problem definition; scope management; measurable objectives; success metrics.
Activities: Sponsor meetings; project brainstorming workshop.
Deliverables: Draft project charter; preliminary scope statement.
Topics: Functional and nonfunctional requirements; user stories; data requirements; operational requirements.
Data Engineering Emphasis: Latency; scalability; reliability; governance.
Deliverable: Requirements specification.
Topics: Data sources; APIs; web scraping ethics; licensing; storage considerations; data quality assessment.
Activities: Initial data collection.
Deliverables: Data inventory; source documentation.
Topics: Data engineering ethics; privacy regulations; bias and fairness; cybersecurity basics; FERPA/HIPAA/GDPR awareness.
Activities: Ethics case study discussion.
Deliverable: Ethics and compliance analysis.
Topics: Modern data architectures; ETL/ELT workflows; orchestration; cloud vs. local; data lakes and warehouses.
Activities: Architecture diagram workshop.
Deliverable: System architecture draft.
Topics: Engineering constraints; technical debt; standards and interoperability; scalability; maintainability.
Potential Standards: JSON, Avro, Parquet, REST, OAuth, metadata standards.
Deliverables: Constraints analysis; standards documentation.
Topics: Agile workflows; sprint planning; Git workflows; issue tracking; risk management.
Activities: Backlog creation; timeline estimation.
Deliverables: Project timeline; sprint roadmap; risk register.
Topics: Proof-of-concept methodology; feasibility validation; benchmarking.
Activities: Build a minimal pipeline or ingestion demo.
Deliverables: Prototype demonstration; feasibility report.
Topics: Engineering reports; architecture documentation; reproducibility; citation standards.
Activities: Peer review workshop.
Deliverable: Draft technical report.
Topics: Technical storytelling; sponsor communication; presentation design; poster design.
Activities: Lightning presentations.
Deliverable: Presentation draft.
Activities: Formal review panel; sponsor feedback; faculty critique.
Deliverable: Revised architecture and scope.
Topics: Implementation semester preparation; semester-two milestones; handoff readiness.
Deliverables: Final proposal; implementation roadmap.
Activities: Formal presentations; poster session; sponsor evaluation.
Deliverables: Final report; final presentation; archived project documentation.