Work in progress — A comparison of mentoring functions in capstone courses across engineering disciplines

In the literature describing capstone courses, authors typically classify their work as “mentoring,” though the term has also been used interchangeably with coaching, supervising, and managing. Yet few studies define these terms concretely, and consistency across studies is unclear. This ambiguity has lead to confusion concerning the responsibilities of faculty in the course, and in turn hindered faculty development efforts. To address this gap, the present study seeks to develop a concrete description of faculty-student interactions in the capstone course. We use the term “mentoring” because it implies a relationship between a a more experienced professional and a novice, where the mentor seeks to aid in the development of the protégé. In the case of capstone design, this development focuses on the integration of engineering theory and practice and the ability to comprehend and navigate the open-endedness of design problems. To provide the design education community with a working understanding of this relationship, this study applies Kram´s theory of mentoring to the context of capstone design to determine the prominent mentoring functions operating in this context, and identifies variations by engineering disciplines.