Business and engineering project interaction

As a result of industry feedback and the new ABET 2000 criteria, Seattle Pacific University (SPU) has begun to introduce multidisciplinary classroom interactive experiences between the business school and the electrical engineering department. This paper reports the way this interaction was implemented through a teaming effort undertaken between the School of Business & Economics and the Department of Electrical Engineering that was initiated in the Spring Quarter of 2001. The effort has consisted of providing joint classroom activities between student teams (three to five members) from a Business Operations Management class and an Electrical Engineering Design class. This work-in-progress paper provides the basic classroom activities that were undertaken, an indication of the educational experiences that were involved and a sampling of student verbal feedback. The authors´ observations indicate that future expansion of this multidisciplinary interaction will likely make this work-in-progress a positive means to help meet their mutual departmental objectives.