Aileen Huang-Saad

Experiential Learning Programs for the Future of Engineering Education

The need for 21st century engineers to be educated as creative innovators is discussed. Three complementary experiential learning programs that help engineering students learn to stretch beyond their comfort zones are described: a multidisciplinary design program; an entrepreneurship program; and an international engineering program. These three interdisciplinary programs each address common educational needs: to create flexible, creative, self-actualized change agents. The approaches we are taking to implement and institutionalize these in a large, comprehensive, research oriented university are described.

Fostering the entrepreneurial mindset in the engineering classroom

As the global economy continues to evolve, the requirements of our technology workforce are changing. In addition, over the past several years, there has been an ABET movement to revise engineering post secondary education. In response to these changing market needs, the biomedical engineering department piloted a new graduate level course during the 2007–2008 academic year, BioMedE599: Graduate Biomedical Engineering Design Team. The purpose of the course is to encourage the students to become adaptive learners through innovative design and provide them with the necessary skill sets to make them successful beyond the University environment as they approach new challenges. Interestingly, the culture cultivated during the two semester pilot course, resulted in more than a simple academic experiential exercise. Students in the class embraced an entrepreneurial mindset as evidenced by their abilities to raise

Using design strategies from microfluidic device patents to support idea generation

43,210 in external funds to develop their prototypes. Results suggest that the learning methods used in this course encourage students to take a more active role in their academic development and helps students develop critical entrepreneurial skills.

Teaching biomedical engineering ethics: A case based approach

Microfluidics has been an important method in providing answers to a wide variety of research questions in chemistry, biochemistry, and biology. Microfluidic designers benefit from instructional textbooks describing foundational principles and practices in developing microfluidic devices; however, these texts do not offer guidance about how to generate design concepts for microfluidic devices. Research on design in related fields, such as mechanical engineering, documents the difficulties engineers face when attempting to generate novel ideas. For microfluidic device designers, support during idea generation may lead to greater exploration of potential innovations in design. To investigate successful idea generation in microfluidics, we analyzed successful microfluidic US patents, selecting those with the key word “microfluidic” over a 2-year period. After analyzing the features and functions of 235 patents, we identified 36 distinct design strategies in microfluidic devices. We document each strategy, and demonstrate their usefulness in a concept generation study of practitioners in microfluidic design. While some of the identified design strategies may be familiar to microfluidic designers, exposure to this large set of strategies helped participants generate more diverse, creative, and unique microfluidic design concepts, which are considered best practices in idea generation.

Technology and talent: Capturing the role of universities in regional entrepreneurial ecosystems

In the fall of 2008, the University of Michigan, Department of Biomedical Engineering engaged industry representatives to introduce a new framework designed to teach graduate level engineering students about biomedical ethical issues in business situations. This framework was built on real-life case studies regarding quality problems in the medical device industry. Students were first introduced to a mini case involving a hypothetical product quality problem related to an implantable medical device. Then, students were divided into teams and assigned specific roles to develop a response. Students were given several days to develop a recommendation during which they could seek additional case information from industry representatives. As a wrap-up, the real-world device recall was presented to the students to highlight how the very same challenges the students faced in their teams were dealt with from an industry perspective. This framework provided both a mechanism to bring real-world ethical situations into the classroom and a method to foster a collaborative learning environment for the students. Of the several exercises used in class, this case-based group exercise was found to be the most effective at helping students understand real-world ethical decision making.

Idea generation in biomedical engineering courses using Design Heuristics

Purpose The manuscript describes entrepreneurial ecosystems of three public, research universities involved in the NSF Midwest I-Corps Node. It presents a synthesis of programming, functional structure, commonly referenced university metrics, and their limitations in measuring impact on commercialization and regional development. Design/methodology/approach Based on current literature, university publications, and discussions with entrepreneurship leaders at the University of Michigan/Ann Arbor, University of Illinois/Urbana Champaign, and Purdue University, the manuscript provides an overview and analysis of entrepreneurial resources and education initiatives. Findings University contributions to entrepreneurial ecosystems can be described with respect to infrastructure and leadership, technology and talent, and culture of innovation. Four main university entities are responsible for driving entrepreneurship initiatives. Identification of these entities, their respective activities, and their outcomes al...

College students’ views of creative process instruction across disciplines

ABSTRACT With increasing demand for improved medical equipment and healthcare, next-generation biomedical engineers need strong design skills. Equipping biomedical engineering students with tools for idea generation and development can increase student design success. Design Heuristics are an ideation tool developed through empirical studies of product designs. While identified in the mechanical engineering space, Design Heuristics may be applicable in biomedical engineering design. In our study, we implemented a Design Heuristics session during upper-level undergraduate and first-year graduate biomedical engineering design courses. We examined the applicability of Design Heuristics within individual and team concept generation contexts. The findings demonstrated that biomedical engineering students were able to use Design Heuristics to generate multiple concepts, and that initial concepts produced using Design Heuristics were carried over into final team design. The results support the applicability of Design Heuristics to student idea generation in biomedical engineering design.