Biomedical Engineering for All Electrical Engineers: A Model for Integrating Novel Content into Existing Curriculum

Biomedical engineering (BME) is one of the fastest growing industries, with an expected job growth rate that is twice that of the overall job growth rate in the US. However, ABET lists only 28 schools offering accredited undergraduate degrees in BME, and particularly under current economic conditions, most schools do not have the resources to offer new degree programs. The resulting gap between the demand for qualified BME professionals and the pro- grams for educating them constitutes a significant, yet unmet, national need. Our goal is to de- velop a new educational paradigm to help reduce this gap. This paradigm is based on introducing novel multidisciplinary content into core engineering curriculum, and it consists of integration of content specific laboratory experiments into core courses to provide essential background, followed by an elective providing topical depth. BME is used as the novel content and ECE as the core curriculum. The method is versatile, as it can be easily modified to integrate other novel multidisciplinary content into any engineering program. We have two specific objectives: (1) to provide ECE students with fundamental and contempo- rary BME knowledge for future career and graduate study opportunities; and (2) to improve stu- dents' interest in and comprehension of ECE concepts by acquainting them with engineering so- lutions to real world problems in medicine. These objectives are achieved by integrating a set of experiments - designed to demonstrate a wide spectrum of BME concepts - into core ECE courses, along with a new elective providing a comprehensive BME overview.