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We believe that a set of core bioengineering topics can be defined, but this is a challenge. Many faculty in bioengineering still come from a background in one of the traditional fields, and even those with bioengineering degrees often are relatively parochial about their piece of bioengineering. The challenge here is to identify those topics and concepts that all bioengineers should have some exposure to because they are likely to be useful no matter what career path the student takes. These topics could be covered in a few core courses in the bioengineering program, or could be learned from courses taught by other departments, where they are likely to be mixed with concepts that may be of marginal relevance for bioengineers. The general areas in which these core topics fall are:

• Thermodynamics
  

• Solid and fluid mechanics
  
• Instrumentation/circuits
  
• Signal and systems analysis
  
• Materials science
  
• Statistics
  
• Systems physiology - for biomedical engineering

Advanced bioengineering

The distinctive stamp of a program on the bioengineers it educates can be achieved by specialized courses and topics beyond the core topics listed above. We believe that further depth in at least two bioengineering domain areas is desirable. This may be done via tracks within the program, or via further specialized courses. Integrated with these topics, or taught separately, should be laboratory experiences and significant design experience that requires students to integrate biology with engineering. Resources for bioengineering design are being assembled.

Pedagogy - Teaching and learning

• A great deal of work in education suggests that some methods of education are better than others. Some of this is summarized in a book called How People Learn, published by the National Research Council. This work indicates that at the K-12 level, at least, education is most effective if it is learner centered, knowledge centered, assessment centered, and community centered. This is the HPL model. Ongoing work in VaNTH tests the value of this approach in bioengineering.

• Curriculum can be constructed around key required topics/concepts rather than particular required courses. This is consistent with a model called backwards design.

• Motivate learning with challenges and examples from real world situations

• Integrate core competency material into biomedical engineering classes in addition to having separate classes in design, etc.

• Motivate learning, transfer, and integrative thinking by teaching engineering topics from biological slant and biological topics from engineering slant