Preparing engineering students to enter the workforce is the fundamental goal and underlying principle for engineering schools in the United States. However, employer feedback states that engineering students may have acquired technical and analytical skills, but they lack many fundamental Design Thinking (DT) concepts. They cannot recognize and seize opportunities, visualize their ideas in the broader context of society, and are not proficient in communicating their ideas. Based on published literature on engineering education and a review of recent bioengineering undergraduate curricula, outside of an intro to engineering in the freshman year and/or senior design capstone experience course, design courses aimed at mid-career undergraduates are uncommon. The sophomore and junior years are the years with the greatest concentration of foundational (including math and science) didactic course work, which is geared towards problem solving using textbook problems that are set, greatly simplified, and have a single solution. These types of problems are not found in real-world engineering situations. The long-term vision of Temple University's Bioengineering Department is to produce B.S. level engineers with the skills to compete in today's workforce and a strong foundational background sufficient to continue with post- baccalaureate education, if desired. One strategy to do this is to introduce and reinforce DT concepts throughout the entire 4-year undergraduate curriculum. The goal of this proposal is to reinforce the concepts of DT in ?mid-career? undergraduate bioengineering students by developing empathy, opportunity recognition through Needs Assessment processes, validation and solution development via didactic course work and a competitive summer immersion experience.
The specific aims for this proposal are to 1) To enhance DT processes in mid-career undergraduate students using open- ended projects and 2) To expose select meritorious undergraduate students to clinical and industrial workplace environments while developing skills in Needs Assessment in ?real world? situations.
These aims will be achieved using 2 newly developed didactic design courses bridged by a summer clinical and industrial immersion. The first course, during second semester sophomore year, consists of open-ended team design projects, concepts of DT, and basics in computer programing and data acquisition/interpretation. The second course, first semester junior year, will include additional team design projects, advanced DT concepts, bioethics, prototyping and optimization. The immersion will include rotations throughout Temple's healthcare clinics, where participants will identify unmet clinical needs and develop engineering design-based solutions. These combined experiences will enable students to develop needed skills in DT in real world workplace situations.
We propose to introduce and reinforce Design Thinking concepts throughout the entire 4-year bioengineering undergraduate curriculum. Specifically, we propose to reinforce the concepts of Design Thinking in ?mid-career? sophomore and junior undergraduate bioengineering students via innovative didactic course work based on a combination of clinical and industrial summer immersion experiences. The long-term goal for this team- based project is to improve student preparedness to enter the workforce, or pursue post-baccalaureate education, if desired, and thrive in our ever-changing global economy.
