Incorporating Creativity into a Capstone Engineering Design Course

Creativity is a critical part of engineering design that should be encourage and nurtured in engineering students.Two creative exercises were implemented into a senior chemical engineering design course.The first exercise was designed to enhance student awareness of the role of creativity in engineering design.In this exercise, students were asked to create a piece of artwork depicting their major (chemical engineering) in some way and to reflect on the process they followed to produce their artwork.The second exercise was designed to improve student understanding of process safety and analysis of process hazards through role-playing.Groups of students were given information on a real process where an accident had occurred in order to provide them the technical background on the process.Then, they pretended to be a safety review team looking at the process before the accident occurred to try to predict potential hazards.One team used HAZOP analysis, while the other used the "What-If?"method for evaluating process safety.The activity where students created a piece of artwork and reflected on how the process of creating art related to engineering design was successful in getting students to think about the process of design and how it is similar to a creative endeavor.An activity using role-playing to have students practice performing a hazards analysis of a chemical process appeared to improve student understanding when the students were given enough time and detailed enough instructions on what they were to accomplish in the role-playing.