Design competitions: does "multidisciplinary" contribute to the team building experience?

Design-and-build competitions are useful in teaching the creative and practical aspects of engineering design. The civil engineering students at Michigan State University participate in three design competitions: the Waste-management Education and Research Consortium (WERC) International Environmental Design contest, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Concrete Canoe Competition, and the American Institute of Steel Construction/ASCE Steel Bridge Competition. Each competition offers a different level of multidisciplinary experience. The environmental competition demands consideration of business, economic, regulatory, health, safety, and community relations aspects of design alternatives. The concrete canoe competition requires consideration of a variety of subdisciplines of civil engineering such as hydrodynamics, materials engineering, and construction management. The steel bridge contest provides virtually no multidisciplinary interaction. The nature of each contest, size of project team, degree of faculty involvement, resource commitment and the mechanics of team building are presented. The value of the multidisciplinary aspect of each competition in team building is assessed.