 Hello, hello. Happy Tuesday. How are you both doing? Oh, I'm great. How are you? Oh, I am good. It is a Tuesday afternoon and we are finally in fall, so I am happy for sure. Mm-hmm. So we'll just wait a minute or two for folks to filter in. I know we do get a lot of viewers after the fact, so it might not be that we have a whole lot of people here for the live. Sure. Also, what is the poster directly behind you that are the framed piece, this art on the walls? Yeah, I was curious if they would show up as mirrored or not. This is from a study abroad experience I did in my undergrad. I went to Vienna for a summer and they made these really well-designed posters and it has just traveled with me ever since. There we go. I was like, what is this portrait that's happening in the background? Alright, well, let's go ahead and get started. Folks will probably trickle in a little bit as the conversation goes on. If not, this is saved on the IG for posterity. So welcome all. This is our fourth, fifth, I think fifth. What is math? Tuesday talks where we chat with various student services offices here at University of Michigan. So today, I'm very excited to feature MDP or the Multidisciplinary Design Program. A lot of great opportunities for various research and corporate teams and projects. We'll of course chat all about today and I am joined by two wonderful colleagues in MDP. I will pass it over for the two of you to introduce yourselves. Alright, thank you. My name is Megan Langell and I'm the Senior Academic Advisor for the Multidisciplinary Design Program. We are in my on-campus office currently. And I am Josh Sheppard. I am on the other side of the wall from this office in Chrysler and I'm the Senior Administrative Assistant for MDP. And I am also the secret behind the College of Engineering Design Expo that I run single-handedly. It's awesome. Awesome. Well, Josh, thank you for walking through the wall into Megan's office. That is a feat and we appreciate it. I didn't introduce myself though. I'm Gray Strain and I am a staff academic advisor in the CSC Undergraduate Advising Office and of course the host here for Tuesday talks. Let's go ahead and get started though. I know we have some questions to get through and a lot of information to share about MDP. So I know I mentioned that MDP gives students the opportunity to participate in a variety of team-based design projects. Could you talk a little bit about the different kinds of projects that are available for students? Sure. So we have three main buckets, as I call them, of project types for students that MDP facilitates. We have industry-sponsored projects. We have faculty research teams, or we call them first teams. And also we offer a mechanism to earn academic credit through student organization teams, most often the ones out of the Wilson Center. So for students that are on a team like Baja or Solar Car or the Mars Rover for multiple semesters, there's a way to earn academic credit through that experience. In the fall, we really focus on the industry-sponsored and the first research teams. We do a very large recruitment cycle in September and October and actually our big recruiting events are later on. That's a teaser for something we'll talk about later. And we co-recruit for those industry-sponsored and faculty research teams with another acronym, the Arts Engine Program recruits with us. And they have faculty engineering arts student teams, which is called FIST. So the way you can differentiate between first and FIST is since FIST has an actual vowel in it, that those are the arts projects co-recruited through Arts Engine. But we have one common application that students can apply for almost 60 projects through our two different programs. Awesome. So certainly a lot of different types of opportunities available. So students, I think from a variety of disciplines and backgrounds would probably find something in MDP. I am curious about the students who can apply for MDP teams. Is it pretty open as far as like majors or programs and what does the application timeline look like for students? Yeah, absolutely. So this is open to essentially anyone and everyone from first year through professional master's students. Any major, any discipline, all 19 schools and colleges on campus are represented in the pool of people who are participating in the program. And most importantly, there is no minimum GPA requirement because someone's GPA doesn't necessarily have any bearing on how well they would work in a team-based setting. So that's awesome. It's not a barrier to entry for folks there. Our application is live as of Friday afternoon of last week and it will be open until October 16th. You can find that on our website and it's again just like one common application wherein you can denote your interest in as many of the projects as you would like. It's great to hear that it's open to really any student that kind of those more loose requirements. I know a lot of the time we have CSN, DSN, CSLSA, CS minor students. So it's kind of like trying to figure out what puzzle piece we can fit in for various students. So glad that really anyone that we advise to kind of jump on one of these project teams. I do want to ask probably the least fun question of our bunch. But again, thinking that we have both engineering and LSA students, I know there are some courses and credits associated with MDP that can count for different major requirements. Could you talk a little bit about the MDP course sequence and what that looks like for students and how those courses can meet major requirements? Definitely. So the main part of my job is to know a little bit about a lot of majors on campus. So we actually have about 75 different degree programs that interact with our program regularly. And we offer our own course sequence that look on a resume or a transcript rather as a lab course, but it's really an independent study-esque class that represents your work on the project team. Those courses are engineering 255, 355, and 455. For students that end up doing a master's degree, we also have a graduate level of engineering 599. If you apply for one of the projects that we are recruiting for right now. So those industry sponsored, the first projects and the feast projects, a requirement of participation on those projects is to earn academic credit. So just like you might go into EECS 281 and know that you are earning credit for that experience, it's the same with ours. Even though, you know, it's a lab-based project course, we still need students to enroll for academic credit. One way that we make that easier is that we work very closely with all of the different degree programs and the undergraduate curriculum chairs to get as many of our projects to count toward a specific degree requirement. So checking off a box in your degree, so to speak. And so most direct use of our MDP project credits is for students in CS who have completed EECS 281 and are on one of our 18 career-proof projects for the CS MDE or Capstone. The number fluctuates from year to year, but this year we have 18 projects that have already been pre-approved. So if you complete EECS 281, even if you're completing it this semester, you get on one of those projects, it can count for your MDE or your Capstone. There are a couple of extra requirements that we update on our website, which involves a specialized CS MDP student class that students take with Professor Jeff Rangenberg. He leads this lecture and it's all for CS students on MDP projects and so that's how they get their degree requirements through participation in that. For the industry sponsored projects, that is the setup. It's the most robust setup and it's four credits each semester on those industry projects. If you are on a faculty research team, you also earn engineering credit and all students can earn up to four credits of flex text through the directed study rule as long as they're in engineering 355 or 455. So first year students that might get on one of these projects at the 255 level, that most often goes toward general electives. I know that you also have data science students that you all work with and we have a similar setup for data science students that they can earn the Capstone as long as they are, you know, close to their graduation timeline if they're within three semesters ish of graduation. So I work closely with the academic departments to see who's eligible for that, but there's a way for data science students to earn their Capstone as well. Good to hear. I think that's always our question or if we bring up like some program opportunity or anything researchers or what can it count for? So knowing that there are some some possibilities as far as getting MDE or flex track done for engineering students. Can I just confirm like for CSLSA students what requirements they might be able to expect taking care of with any MDP courses? Yes, the CSLSA students can earn the Capstone credit with our projects. And another thing that's really relevant, not just to CSLSA students, but we have an academic minor as well. And so students that are earning Capstone credit from CSLSA can also earn our minor in multidisciplinary design. So often students like to hear about that as well. And that's something that I can talk to interested students about. Of course, sending all of the students to Megan for all the questions about course stuff. But there are certainly again opportunities to count some of those major requirements through the MDP process. So I know we kind of showcased this a little bit earlier, but I want to give you the opportunity to talk about some ways to get in contact with your office. And certainly a certain series of events that's happening this week, I believe tomorrow and Thursday. Yes, indeed. So this week are the major recruiting events for this cycle that will run projects from January through December 2023. We have project fairs taking place tomorrow evening in the EECS atrium and then Thursday afternoon in Pierpont, Deuterstadt Connector, Deuterstadt atrium. Students can either attend one or the other or both depending on how many of the projects they're interested in. They will all be represented the same way across both events. The only difference is time and location. But there will be representation from all the projects that are recruiting for Feast and First and the corporate sponsor teams as well. If you can't attend either of the events, that's completely and totally fine. You're still encouraged to apply. There's lots of information about the projects available on our website as well. You don't need to register in advance to attend the project fair. You can just kind of show up, head to the nearest check-in table so that you can get on the list for follow-up information, which is very useful and key. You can get follow-up information about all of the people that were representing their companies and details about the projects and stuff like that. These work more like a casual career fair. You don't have to show up suited and booted by any means. You can if that's your day-to-day, but it's definitely not a requirement. We recommend reviewing all of the information about any of the projects that you might be interested in in advance. So that you can speak with a little bit more apparent technical understanding to the representatives of the projects, because that kind of shows the degree of your interest and like pre-commitment. And is a good way to kind of differentiate yourself from the masses like if you go to a table with say Northrop Grumman and you know what you're talking about, the folks representing the company will remember you and keep that in mind when they're reviewing applications in the future. So definitely recommend students, you know, go to these opportunities tomorrow and Thursday and certainly do your research like Josh said, excuse me. Also, I will be stealing suited and booted. Just going to tell you that right now. So I will give you a trademark, a copyright on that where possible. I know we're coming to the end of our time here and kind of the questions we have planned, but I'm curious for one final question. Why should a student do MDP? I appreciate that's a big question, but I'd just love to hear y'all's insight about what it adds to a student's experience. Sure. So all of the opportunities of Michigan engineering are equally wonderful. And students have the job of kind of way finding between which ones that they would most like to pursue. And we are really good home for students that like hands on learning that like open ended design problems that are excited about a challenge that hasn't already been laid out exactly what the solution might be. We are part of a suite of offices called the immersed programs. So you might have heard about that. There is an immersed fair tomorrow that's officially for first year and transfer students, but people might walk by. If they happen to see me at a table and have a specific question about MDP applications, I'm happy to answer it. So the immersed programs are all for students that want to do something outside of their major. And ours just happens to be very design focused or project focused. Often, engineering was finding that some majors did not participate in a real hands on project between engineering 100 and their major design experience or capstone. There were fewer long term immersive project experiences. The MDP projects, especially the ones that we're recruiting for our two semester design cycle. Often you were finding that in a senior design project, you get through one or two iterations. It would be a pretty cool product, but really, if you had a few more months to work on it, it could really be a substantial deliverable at the end. And so our two semester projects give students more time to do that. The industry sponsored projects are scoped to be about a two semester project cycle. So it's very likely that they reach the all the deliverables by the end. The faculty research and the, the feast projects are more long term projects, especially if you're interested in research or innovative exploration of ideas. And so for those projects, there's often the chance to stay on for more than the two semesters that you've originally applied for. So especially students that might be interested in graduate school, our first teams are a very good way to see if they like long term research. I think MDP is a really great option for students that want, like, like you said, that more in depth experience that to borrow the language immersive experience in their engineering education. Any final thoughts that either of you want to share about MDP, anything you want to share with students before we wrap up today? Really just come say hello during the events this week and we have some really cool projects this year that anyone with even like a passing interest in hands on engineering opportunities should just check out. Oh, I would like to close with a story. I have a liberal arts background so I like to use, you know, examples. So we had a student one year. This was before COVID when we could just do things in person with large groups of people and it was just the norm. And this gentleman just rolled up on a longboard happened upon our projects and was like, Oh, what is this? Talk to some people at a company wowed them. This was a first year student or maybe a second year wasn't in the upper level technical courses yet with zero preparation and just kind of the willingness to go talk and learn about a project. They were offered a spot on the first project they applied to. And so if students feel like this is really intimidating, it's just one other thing that they have to go research and make a checklist about. That's helpful if that's your method of preparing for things and feeling comfortable entering into an unknown project fair experience that you could also just show up and introduce yourself and ask questions and that's perfectly fine. Well, I will be showing up Megan on a longboard tomorrow then. I will probably be falling over as I arrive on said longboard as what I the production is important. Well, I appreciate y'all's time to chat a little bit MDP that upcoming deadline on October 16th. As well as the opportunities tomorrow and Thursday to get more information on these projects. We are going to be doing 1 more Tuesday talk happening next week with renew CS. So be in the lookout for that that will be a pre recorded conversations will post information on when it's available on YouTube next week. And then we might have some more coming in the future still looking at some opportunities for additional offices to talk to Megan Josh. I appreciate your time. I hope you enjoy the rest of your weeks and have a great turnout today and tomorrow and Thursday. Thank you so much. Thank you. Have a great day. Take care. Bye.