On-Campus Students

ME317 provides a great opportunity to learn valuable engineering skills in a real-world, project team-based environment. ME317 has taught over 2500 students the past 26 years, and provides an opportunity to work with a company and fellow students on a typical industry project.

Benefits

• Potential Internships or Employment opportunities: ME317 is an industry-sponsored project course, offering opportunities to interact with the project sponsors and build relationships. ME317 also attracts industry-based students, some of whom may be working on campus projects. These contacts can lead to summer internship or interviewing opportunities.
• Interview preparation: ever been in an interview and asked to "tell me how you solved a complex product development challenge in the past"? ME317 provides both the opportunity (project) and the tools (Design Methods) to knock this question out of the park. After taking this course, you will be able to explain how you considered broad stakeholder requirements, system complexity and reliability, and product financials all in the context of system concept development.
• Valuable skills for product development/analysis/program management: ME317 is the gift that keeps on giving. The tools you learn in this class will serve you well in a wide variety of industry positions; and many of these tools have been used and refined over the 25-year ME317 course history.
• Potential for travel: Some projects may require either domestic or international travel.

FAQs

What is Stanford ME317?

ME317 Design Methods is a 6-month, 2-quarter course delivered from January to June. ME317 is a project-based course--there are no examinations, but there are plenty of homeworks, presentations, and project reports. ME317 addresses "system development" of a wide variety of project applications, including establishing requirements, concept development, financial evaluation, and communicating results. ME317 includes both standard lecture-based material as well as frequent interaction with the ME317 teaching staff.

If I sign up for ME317A, do I have to take ME317B?

Yes. Since this is a project-based course, a change in student enrollment from ME317A to ME317B is very disruptive to the project team, and unfair to the project sponsor. Therefore, we ask only those students who can commit to two quarters to sign up for ME317A. For on-campus students, you will be given a provisional N grade for ME317A, and then letter grades for both ME317A and ME317B at the completion of ME317B.

What project will I work on in this class?

For on-campus students and industry singletons, you will be assigned a project to work on. You will have a chance to view the project offerings at the special session after the 2nd lecture (Jan. 5th, 5:30PM), and you can indicate a preference for particular projects that you would like to work on. Although we try to satisfy most student preferences, we also need to take into consideration other factors (experience, company popularity, on-campus vs. remote participant, etc.)

Will I have to travel for this course?

Yes, you may have to travel to conduct project work and interact with sponsors. We understand that students have other classes and obligations, so trip scheduling is conducted with this in mind.

-- KurtBeiter - 04 Jan 2013