Enhancing Undergraduate Bioengineering Education through Engaged Service Learning, Clinical Immersion, and Entrepreneurship

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ABSTRACT The need to supplement our research education program is based on fostering improved research career development for our undergraduates as well as additional participants for our clinical immersion program. This supplement request will directly help to enhance student practical experience. Biomedical engineering graduates entering the workforce can struggle due to under-developed soft skills, critical thinking, or the clinical mindset needed to succeed in a professional biomedical team setting. To address this need, we propose to enhance our curriculum by facilitating earlier exposure to hands-on team based design and experiential learning in clinical and industry relevant practice. We will specifically implement new components of a team service-learning design course at the sophomore level, a summer clinical immersion program with local hospitals and emergency medical services at the junior level, and a team-centered workshop led by local industry experts on the translation and commercialization of medical devices to augment the senior design experience. Providing students with needs- based service-learning design projects will prepare them in developing technologies that will not only address public health concerns but also be welcomed by the community and enhance their understanding of the importance of engineering in service to society. Building upon this through new partnerships in the proposed program for clinical immersion, student will gain proficiency in identifying and evaluating unmet clinical needs as well as gain meaningful perspectives related to human factors and expectations for design of a quality medical device. Students will also benefit from a design team-centered workshop series that will be led by local industry experts through activities that will improve their understanding of the industry-relevant practices for development and how to navigate the regulatory approval process to translate and commercialize their senior design technologies. Through this three-tiered enhancement to our program that takes students through the complete process of needs finding to commercialization, students will gain the practical experience early on and repeatedly throughout their degree. By strengthen their skills spanning engineering, medicine, and business this program will help meet our graduates meet the needs of the biomedical workforce and serve as the next generation of entrepreneurs in the biomedical industry. Our supplement will thus support these areas as within the scope of our parent award.