Paper Authors

Abstract

NOTE: The first page of text has been automatically extracted and included below in lieu of an abstract

Session 2209

Involvement of Clinical Medical Professionals as Technical Advisors in Biomedical Engineering Design Projects

Monica A. Schmidt, Richard Jendrucko, and Anthony E. English Biomedical Engineering Program, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville

Introduction A new two-semester senior design course sequence has been developed as part of the under- graduate Biomedical Engineering (BME) degree program begun in 2000. These design courses satisfy much of the ABET 2000 Criterion 4 for the Professional Component—specifically the major design experience. The course format involves multiple student teams working on unre- lated design projects, so that students can be assigned to projects related to their technical inter- ests. A faculty member and one or more technical advisors direct each project team. Clinical medical professionals have volunteered as technical advisors for design teams in the first two academic years of offering these design courses.

Projects involving doctors in clinical practice provided real-world design experiences for BME students. Medical professionals have included an orthopedic surgeon and a neurosurgeon, both in clinical practice at local hospitals, as well as a veterinary orthopedic surgeon from the UT Col- lege of Veterinary Medicine. Projects developed with these surgeons include instrumentation design for both unicompartmental and total knee replacement surgery, design of a cranioplasty implant, design of a video system for measurement of canine stride length, and design of a ped- aled cart for canine passive motion therapy.

Design Course Format The senior design course sequence is taught as two courses, totaling 6 credit hours, taken in se- quence during the Fall and Spring semesters of a single academic year. Each course is taught by one to three faculty members, so that each faculty supervises two to four design teams. These entire faculty are involved in grading for each design team’s major assignments. Each design team works on a separate project throughout the two semesters of coursework. Thus, multiple projects cover the broad range of technical interests among the BME faculty and students.

Design projects are completed by students working in teams under the supervision of BME fac- ulty with input from technical advisors. Each design team consists of four to five students and receives project guidance from one faculty instructor as well as from one or more technical advi- sors. The technical advisors may be other faculty, typically within the Mechanical, Aerospace and Biomedical Engineering department, or professionals from outside the University, such as doctors in clinical practice. Faculty instructors have responsibility for assignments and grading, but technical advisors typically review written reports and can provide input to faculty for grad- ing students on their teams.

Students give input on their preferences for design projects, but faculty make the final team as- signments. Faculty identify options for design projects prior to the beginning of the Fall semes- ter. At the first class meeting, students are presented with the design project options and then

Proceedings of the 2003 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2003, American Society for Engineering Education

• Citation

• Format
  • APA
  • APA - LaTeX bibitem
  • MLA
  • MLA - LaTeX bibitem
  • Bibtex
  • EndNote - RIS

Jendrucko, R., & English, A., & Schmidt, M. (2003, June), Involvement Of Clinical Medical Professionals As Technical Advisors In Biomedical Engineering Design Projects Paper presented at 2003 Annual Conference, Nashville, Tennessee. 10.18260/1-2--11387