Preparing Future Bioengineers

Preparing Future Bioengineers
Vanderbilt-led Center Develops Critical
Educational Materials

Graduate student Marcella Woods induces fibrillation and uses fluorescent dye to study electrical properties of the heart.

Just as information technology and e-commerce rapidly are transforming the face of the economy, so too are bioengineering and biotechnology impacting health care. Gene therapy, tissue engineering, technology for non-invasive surgical procedures, medical imaging, and specialized drug deliveries are just a few of the biotechnologies bursting onto the scene. As engineering, physics, mathematics, and biology merge in this arena, new insights into the living state translate into an almost insatiable demand for bioengineering solutions.
While opportunities for bioengineers abound, bioengineering education has not kept pace. “Bioengineering is like a whitewater world, where you constantly are canoeing through rapid change,” says Thomas R. Harris, professor and chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering. “There are only 22 accredited bioengineering programs in the country, and although they are good, the number of people needing training and the lightning speed change in the field are revealing limits in the present educational paradigm.”
As part of the solution, a National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center devoted to bioengineering education was established at Vanderbilt last fall. NSF awarded VUSE a $10 million grant ($2 million per year for five years, and a possible three-year extension), one of the largest grants the School has ever received.
Known as the Vanderbilt - Northwestern -Texas - Harvard/MIT (VaNTH) Center for Bioengineering Educational Technologies, it is the only NSF center dedicated to bioengineering education. Bioengineering experts from the five institutions are working together to organize a knowledge base for bioengineering, determine the best teaching strategies to train practitioners, and create teaching materials that can be customized to a wide range of bioengineering specialties and educational levels—from K-12 to college and beyond.

Educational Partners
A strong partnership between the VUSE Department of Biomedical Engineering and Vanderbilt’s Peabody College Learning Technology Center (LTC) is a key reason NSF selected Vanderbilt for the Center, says Dean Kenneth Galloway. He credits Harris, the Center director, and John D. Bransford, Centennial Professor of Psychology and Education, and co-director of the LTC, with creating the partnership that anchors the Center’s work.
“VaNTH brings learning science and bioengineering domains together,” Harris says. “Peabody professors have expertise in how people learn and have been observing biomedical engineering classes to gain insight into how the subject is taught. They then apply this knowledge to help improve teaching methods for the discipline.”
Equally important to the success of the Center is the collaboration among the five universities providing substantive content. Collaborating universities were selected based on their leadership in bioengineering education and because of their different educational missions, Harris says.
“The five schools give the Center geographic and ethnic diversity, as well as varied structures in which to operate. For instance, the University of Texas includes six medical centers, and Harvard/MIT has a unique health sciences and technology program. This gives us a broad range of contexts in which to test and apply our educational concepts.”
The Center is composed of different research thrusts that parallel the various bioengineering domains. Each research thrust consists of one leader and faculty members from all participating universities.
Now nine months old, the Center is immersed in developing different teaching modules for the various domains.
“Modules will contain teaching materials useful for chalkboard to distance learning and all points in between—CDs, web addresses, homework problems, and slides to be used during class,” Harris says. “An instructor at any educational level could follow our teaching script exactly, or customize a course by picking and choosing the elements he/she wants. We also plan to include assessment models and a blueprint of how the module fits into the broader bioengineering curriculum.”

Industrial Partners
Also important to the future of bioengineering education are collaborations between the Center and industry. VaNTH currently is in negotiation with a number of corporations interested in developing mutually beneficial partnerships.
Partners can help VaNTH in such ways as identifying skills and knowledge necessary for bioengineering; reviewing module development; helping to design continuing education courses; disseminating educational materials; offering internships to students; and making gifts of cash or in kind contributions of software, hardware, or personnel.
Industries can benefit from partnerships by gaining exposure to top students at participating universities through internships and other activities, and by access to continuing education programs that will be developed by the Center, Harris says.
“Continuing education is necessary because industry has an ongoing need to rapidly train staff in breaking biotechnologies. In many cases, engineers working on biologically related applications have no biology background whatsoever. Our challenge is to discover how to convey biological findings in a way useful to them.”
Corporations or laboratories expressing interest in partnerships include Dell, Kimberly-Clark, HealthStream, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Gene Burton and Associates, Abbott Laboratories, National Instruments, Gold Standard Media, Pathogenesis, and Siemens.
VaNTH plans not only to train engineers in biology, but also scientists in engineering. Reinhold Mann, director of the Life Sciences Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and chair of VaNTH’s industrial board, expects the modules to be helpful to his employees, who are not engineers, but biologists, physicists, and biophysicists working on a spectrum of activities ranging from studying human and other genomes to the health effects of such environmental substances as chemicals and radiation.
“Bioengineering is receiving a lot of attention now because many new technologies are available and others quickly are coming along. The more industry can interface with the VaNTH modules, the better everyone is going to be,” he says.

K-12 Exposure
Working engineers, scientists, and college students are not going to be the only beneficiaries of this endeavor. Some of VaNTH’s effort is aimed at developing bioengineering materials for K-12. “It is helpful for young students to see applications of science principles,” says Robert Sherwood, associate professor of education and a member of Peabody’s LTC. “Research suggests that students who see firsthand why a principle is important tend to better remember the knowledge and be able to apply it.
“As students come to understand through the modules that bioengineers develop instruments and processes to monitor health and help improve lives, they may become more interested in studying science and engineering,” he adds.—Beth Matter and Vivian Cooper-Capp