Using Student Projects to Compare Model-Based Systems Engineering and Human-Centered Design; Learning or Labor? When Industry Sponsored Student Projects Start Looking Like Contracts 31 views

The design of engineering systems and the institutional structures surrounding engineering education share a common problem: the people most affected by these systems are excluded from helping create and shape them. Within the realm of capstone and design, this exclusion begins to operate on two levels. First, students as designers can be distanced from real users when building technical systems. Second, students as workers are embedded within university-industry partnership where institutional narratives, “learning by doing” and “workforce readiness” shape how their labor is defined and valued. Both problems show a deeper tension within engineering practice, the gap between people who design and manage systems and the people who live within them. This portfolio examines that tension from two angles: a technical project that compared design methodologies, and an STS project that analyzed the labor dynamic within sponsored engineering projects.

BS (Bachelor of Science)

Human Centered Design; Model Based Systems Engineering; Systems Design Methodology; Industry-University Partnerships; Student Labor

School of Engineering and Applied Science Bachelor of Science in Systems and Information Engineering Technical Advisor: Ried Bailey STS Advisor: Caitlin Wylie Technical Team Members: Luke Schroeder, Diya Amat, Mohamed Elhawabri

English

All rights reserved by the author (no additional license for public reuse)

2026-05-08