Integration of Industrial Mentors into the Teaching of a Naval Architecture Design Course

This paper details the Naval Architecture program at the University of British Columbia with emphasis on the delivery of the capstone design program in ship design. Since the enrollment is a small number of highly motivated students, the program instructors can utilize innovative project based learning strategies into the program. The paper highlights the iterative nature of ship design that is traditionally represented by a design spiral. In order to reinforce relevance and ensure that practices parallel those of industry, the instructors of the computer aided ship design course rely on the local Naval Architecture design firms to provide assistance to the students. This assistance is in the form of mentorship, access to proprietary design data, and student evaluation. In addition, the course instructors require that the student design teams complete a ship design that meets the requirements of an industry sponsored design competition. The paper illustrates the ship design process with an example of a student ship design project entered into an international competition.