Research-Curriculum Development in Tissue Engineering

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This CRCD program in Tissue Engineering at Drexel University, is an outgrowth of over three years of collaborative research and team teaching by Professors Cato Laurencin and Frank Ko in advanced biomaterials and a combined laboratory-lecture course in tissue engineering wherein team work, laboratory skills and communication are stressed. The research activities are organized into five key areas including: advanced biomaterials, cell-tissue-construct interaction, scaffold design and manufacturing, bio-surfaces, and computer aided tissue engineering. The curriculum is designed to give maximum flexibility to be adopted to various engineering and science MS and BS/MS programs. Of the six courses designed for the specialization in Tissue Engineering, three of them are new courses and three are modified from existing courses. These courses are laboratory intensive with emphasis on team projects. A web-based outcome assessment methodology will be employed to evaluate the curriculum. The key and unique features of this curriculum development proposal are:1)The program utilizes web-based learning techniques which not only will encourage student initiated learning, but will allow rapid dissemination of components of the curriculum at the local and national level, once the efficacy of the curriculum is validated. 2)The program involves strong industrial support through the Ben Franklin Technology Partnership Program, a state funded academia-industry liaison organization, which has pledged seed funds to begin the industrial component of the curriculum program. 3) The program has an unusually strong commitment to developing underrepresented minority scientists in Tissue Engineering through links with Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, the nation's oldest historically Black college.