ROSIA S. ROWE

ABOUT

                  My involvement in the team helped us with driving the project forward throughout the entirety of the semester. Initially, our team had a lot of team meetings to decide on initial designs, the processes that we thought were essential, and what we would need to due to meet deadlines imposed on the team by our design professors. In the beginning, I helped our team brainstorm how we wanted our system to operate. I brainstormed various facility designs, storage designs, how the layout of the facility should look, and what we needed to approach this with our team. I helped with research about the site, making sure that written proposals and submissions were ready for the course. By making sure the design was written and hammered out, our team was able to work on the drawings and graphics. I worked in sketchup with the dimensions of our facility to get a life-like graphic of what the facility might look like upon completion. I also worked on AutoCAD drawings for the composter, a perspective view of the composter, and the parts involved in the mechanical auger because we could not find specifications from Green Mountain Technologies which produces the in-vessel composters that our team designed the project around. I also did the design work, organization, editing and layout for our poster, an educational component that was showcased at the ASABE Poster Competition. I also heavily contributed to writing up the last project report for submittal.

          Overall, by completing this project, I have learned a lot about project time management, working within a group around different schedules, the importance of self-guided work, how to take constructive criticism in order to adjust weaknesses to improve the project. I also learned a lot about the ins and outs of composting as a process, which has been a very interesting topic to research and consider over the past five months. This semester in senior design has also taught me a lot about designing something from start to finish as the parameter of the project constantly change and evolve. This project has taught me that the design is only a portion of the actual engineering process. Putting together drawings, proposals, planning for human error, working within constraints, meeting objectives, and then considering issues that arise with each design are some of the things that our team had to do to be successful. I can take this newfound knowledge and apply it to any career field I choose. Being an independent learner and thinker, meeting project deadlines, working with others, communicating individual and team expectations, asking supervisors questions, being intentional about the work that is turned in, reviewing work, and practicing for proposals and presentations translates to any field of work.

         As I continue to pursue a career in the legal profession, I will use this design process as a framework for completing work I will be proud of and work that I am confident will positively impact those who come into contact with it. This class has taught me to think differently about long-term goals and how to accomplish them and reap the reward of hard work over an extended period of time. All in all, I am proud of the work that my teammates and I did, and I am proud of the overall turnout of our design.