Project Overview

The term project in a civil engineering, introductory, course aims to develop a preliminary project proposal. The scope of this project is designed to give students, in Year 1 or Year 2, an introduction to the expectations they will meet during the first part of the capstone project in Year 4. Student teams develop a project scope, impact statement, and a final project poster.

The project location is a large vacant lot in a first-ring suburb.  The expectations to the proposed redevelopment project are that it must:

* promote Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.

* connect residents and businesses.

* provide residents access to amenities by providing micromobility pathways and connections to traditional modes of transportation.

* create destinations within the project using placemaking.

* integrate low impact development to manage stormwater by infiltrating and treating the runoff prior to reaching the waterways. 

Student teams met with the city planners, and they reviewed survey results from interviews with stakeholders to consider their Diverse needs. The students Created Value for the users while observing the needs of the stakeholders; used inquiry (Curiosity), and created Connections between project needs to past classroom and personal experiences.  The project milestone included:

• Mini pitches where team members presented their individual ideas at the beginning of a session and then the team jointly developed one project proposal by the end of the session.
• A written project impact statement.
• A poster presentation to the city’s Sustainability Planner.

Example - City of Southfield, MI

The City of Southfield is a first-ring suburb to the City of Detroit, Michigan. The City of Southfield became an automation and automotive hub developed around the Lodge Freeway, connecting the northern suburbs to Detroit. The continued depopulation of Detroit starting in 1967 through the 1990s resulted in urban sprawl beyond the first-ring suburbs.  The total population of Southfield has remained fairly constant during this time period with around 75,000 to 77,000 residents. The demographics, however, has considerably changed where in 1980, 88% of the population identified as white and 9% as black and in 2020 70% identified as black and 24% as white. The current residents have Diverse cultural, racial, ethnic, and religious backgrounds include large African American, Armenian, Chaldean, Jewish, and Russian populations.

In 1980s, the Southfield population was predominantly upper middle class with every family owning one or more vehicles.  However, the current residents fall in to several income classes, with a median household income of $60,000 and 11% of the population living in poverty. The current population has different needs in terms of city amenities than the population in 1980. Since 2010, the City of Southfield has made concerted efforts to provide Inclusive and Equitable amenities serving its Diverse population.

Integrating Entrepreneurial Mindset

This project is an outcome from the KEEN workshop Enhancing Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) through EML hosted in Denver, 2022.  The 3C’s in the EML Framework and associated core learning outcomes are realized in this project.

Curiosity – The project topics were introduced and scaffolded using lectures, field trips, and guest speakers in the first part of the semester.  This enabled the student teams to exercise curiosity and collaborative inquiry driven by the need to serve the primary civil engineering stakeholders; namely society and the natural and built environment.

Connections - The students demonstrate their ability to acquire new knowledge to gain insight into a complex problem with multiple realistic constraints. The teams collected information from multiple sources ranging from published community surveys conducted for the city, other proposed community improvement projects, city planning meetings, design guides, and a number of data bases.  

Creating Value - The collaborative EML process creates opportunities for fresh perspectives to address the needs of the project’s stakeholders.  The project solution incorporates various design elements that relate to existing projects and amenities while considering the city’s priorities – Sustainability, micro-mobility, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion as well as low impact development for storm water management.