The modern research area of tissue engineering is being introduced to biology and engineering students (at different stages of their academic careers ) through linked undergraduate laboratory experiences. This is a collaborative effort between the University of South Carolina (USC) Columbia (a research I university), USC Lancaster, (a community college) and Benedict College (a four year HBCU). Senior level students at USC Columbia are designing, developing, implementing, and optimizing bioreactors through an inquiry-based approach. These students are formulating novel research hypotheses, testing their hypotheses and then using these experiences to renew laboratory experiments in lower level courses at USC Columbia (mechanical engineering, biomedical engineering, and biology), at Benedict College (cell biology) and at USC Lancaster (introductory biology).
The intellectual merit of this proposal lies primarily in developing and assessing a novel educational strategy whereby experimental systems designed by senior students are used to continuously renew undergraduate laboratory experiments. It is hypothesized that this novel approach to education will produce students more able to deal with the technical demands of industry, and who possess the communication skills required to succeed in a field that relies on a diverse workforce.
The broader impacts of this proposal include increased interest in post-graduate opportunities in bioengineering research and industry by students who are armed with a unique technical and immediately practical skill set due to the interdisciplinary nature of tissue engineering. This project is impacting a broad set of students, in terms of base institution, home department (Mechanical Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, Biology), and student experience (sophomores through seniors) and engaging a broad set of faculty (from assistant professors relatively new to laboratory teaching to full professors with many years of experience in laboratory development). This broad diversity in personnel and institutional base is helping to establish the ease with which this approach can be implemented in alternative academic environments. The novel educational model being implemented in this project, namely continuous renewal of undergraduate laboratories based on senior level research experiences, can be broadly applied to other emerging interdisciplinary technical areas.
