Engineering Success and Successful Engineering: A West Point Cadet Project with NASA Illustrates the Value of Diversity

As part of their senior year capstone experience at the United States Military Academy, five Systems Engineering and Engineering Management cadets are working with NASA on enhancing ways to more safely land autonomous space landers on other planets and more reliably guide autonomous surface rovers through our largely un-navigated solar system.Despite the apprehension the cadets had when they first discovered they would be working on such a daunting task, after a semester of getting to know one another and assessing their individual and collective strengths and weaknesses, they have developed into a cohesive team that has gained both an improved understanding of our nation's space exploration program and greater insights into how NASA engineers are currently approaching the problem.Even though the cadets did not come equipped with any noteworthy qualifications or specific background on space or sensor technologies, they acknowledge that their undergraduate courses have prepared them for dealing with the challenge.As a result, they are putting into practice much of the theory that they have been learning.The capstone project is also providing the cadets with an opportunity to experience first-hand what leadership and teamwork are all about.In this paper, the cadets describe what they have learned during their capstone experience, and they explain what it took for them to successfully engineer an engineering success.Recognizing that in order to produce a valueadded solution to a complex problem, the cadets needed to gain as many insights as they could from differing perspectives.Through their own diverse backgrounds and unique insights into the problem, the cadets were able to apply a systems engineering problem-solving methodology to help advance NASA's current design and approach.While portions of the cadets' work and results on the project will be highlighted, this paper focuses primarily on the learning outcomes and educational goals realized through this capstone experience.