To strengthen the quality of undergraduate education, Sichuan University-Pittsburgh Institute (SCUPI) launched its senior design project proposal defense at the end of October 2022. Each senior design project team started the proposal defense by stating the project background, objectives, technical approach, project deliverables, and estimated timeline and cost, after which faculties from related departments responded with their questions and suggestions for future improvement and subsequently offered their assessments of the project proposal for intellectual and managerial qualities.

The proposal defense process substantially helped our senior students clarify their project design and methodology, identify potential issues and, more importantly, find their own solutions to overcome obstacles on their ways to success.

At SCUPI, the education of our students is always our top priority. Since student senior design projects will showcase such effort, SCUPI has always been striving to maintain high standard outcomes by a series of rigorous evaluating procedures: highlighted by the proposal defense, the midterm check, the final project defense, and thesis writing. Along with the proposal defense activities, SCUPI lab team also organized four training sessions for senior students in November. These training sessions covered a variety of engineering applications, including the 3D printing, machining operations, material characterization and robotic mechatronics. These training sessions not only helped students foster the engineering skills, but also promoted more effective handling and usage of lab resources. Undoubtedly, this will contribute to the incubation of excellent senior design projects.

From https://scupi.scu.edu.cn/en/activities/senior-design-project-proposal-defense-and-lab-training-for-class-2023