Biology Across the Curriculum: Preparing Students for a Career in the Life Sciences

Claire Komives; Michael J. Prince; Theresa A. Good; Laurent Simon; John P. O'Connell; Jeffrey John Chalmers; Erik Fernandez

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Conference: 2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Vancouver, BC
Publication Date: June 26, 2011
Start Date: June 26, 2011
End Date: June 29, 2011
ISSN: 2153-5965
Conference Session: Emerging Areas: Biotechnology, Microtechnology, and Energy
Tagged Division: Chemical Engineering
Page Count: 14
Page Numbers: 22.289.1 - 22.289.14
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--17570
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/17570
Download Count: 345

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Paper Authors

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Claire Komives San Jose State University

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Dr. Claire Komives is presently an Associate Professor in the Chemical and Materials Engineering Department at San Jose State University (SJSU). She has taught ten different courses, including core chemical engineering courses at the graduate and undergraduate levels, Biochemical Engineering lecture and laboratory courses and a bioethics general education course. She has research experience in the areas of biosensors, enzyme kinetics, cell culture, fermentation and bioprocess engineering. Among her professional positions, she has spent one year as a Visiting Scientist at Genencor, a Danisco Division, where she developed a metabolic flux model for an enzyme production process. Additionally, after her postdoctoral research at the ETH-Zurich, she obtained a Science and Diplomacy Fellowship from the American Association for the Advancement of Science to spend a year working in the U.S. Agency for International Development providing technical expertise to the Child Health Research Project which promoted research targeting the reduction of child mortality in third world countries. She has 19 publications and two patents, has received over $1MM in grants since joining SJSU. She currently serves on the Executive Committee of the ACS Biochemical Technology Division and on the advisory board of the Society of Biological Engineering.

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Laurent Simon is an Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering and the Associate Director of the Pharmaceutical Engineering Program at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. He received his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Colorado State University in 2001. His research and teaching interests involve modeling, analysis and control of drug-delivery systems. He is the author of a series of educational and interactive modules (Laboratory Online), available at http://laurentsimon.com/.

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John P. O'Connell University of Virginia

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John O'Connell is H.D. Forsyth Professor of Chemical Engineering. His 44-year career has been equally split between U. Florida and U. Virginia where he spent 11 years total as Department Chair. He has coauthored 4 books in the area of thermodynamics and phase equilibria, as well as published over 130 papers including 9 devoted to chemical engineering education. He shared the Corcoran Award for best paper in Chemical Engineering Education in both 1993 and 1994, and was the ConocoPhillips Educational Award Lecturer at Oklahoma State University in 2007. His service includes Chair of the AIChE Fellows, over 25 years as faculty advisor to AIChE Student Chapters, Chair of the CEE Publications Board, and an Editor of Fluid Phase Equilibria.

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Jeffrey John Chalmers Ohio State University, Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering

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Jeff Chalmers is a Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular at The Ohio State University. In addition to a Professor, he is also Director of the Analytical Cytometery Shared Resource which is part of the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center and the Ohio State University Medical School. In his 22 years at Ohio State, he has received a National Science Foundation Young Investigator Award, was elected a Fellow of American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering in 2001, and in 2005 was elected to the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has published over 100 peer reviewed articles in bioengineering, and over 30 of these papers, nine patents, and one book, are in the area of magnetic cell separation. Professor Chalmers received his Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1988 and his B.S. in Chemical Engineering from UC Berkeley and a B.A. from Westmont College in 1983.

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Erik Fernandez University of Virginia

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Abstract

Biology across the curriculum: Preparing students for a career in the life sciencesAddition of biological applications into the chemical engineering undergraduate curriculum isbecoming more common now, in a response to the pervasive use of biology in more and moreaspects of modern technology. Likewise, as recommended in the National Academy ofEngineering’s, “Educating the Engineer of 2020”, “Engineering schools should introduceinterdisciplinary learning in the undergraduate environment, rather than having it as anexclusive feature of the graduate programs.” Thus, including biological problems inundergraduate courses serves two purposes, namely, to teach students to apply their fundamentalengineering principles to new and different fields and also to help prepare more students foreventual careers in the life sciences.The Bioengineering Educational Materials Bank has been in operation since early in 2007 withproblems for the Material and Energy Balance Course. Since then five additional core courseshave been added: Kinetics and Reactor Design; Process Dynamics and Control; Heat and MassTransfer; Fluid Dynamics; and Thermodynamics. Workshops were held for faculty to learnbasic principles of biology and how engineering principles are applied in many different aspectsof modern biotechnology, from kinetics of biological reactions to fluid transfer and processdynamics problems in whole organisms. Problems are organized by textbook sections relevantfor each course. There are close to 200 problems posted on the website and the solutions to theproblems are available only to registered faculty. To date the website has had over 1100registrations by students and faculty, including faculty from chemical engineering departmentsfrom around the world.Beta testing is in progress for the newly posted course materials. To date, the data has beenanalyzed only for the material and energy balance course problems. For that study, 199 studentsfrom six universities were tested with a set of simple bio and non-bio concept questions, inaddition to questions about familiarity with the material. Data showed that students from classesthat included the BioEMB problems were able to perform better on the bio-based problems thanstudents whose teachers did not include the BioEMB problems in their course. Additionally, theperformance on the non-bio questions did not show statistical differences in performance acrossthe sites that would have suggested that inclusion of the additional BioEMB problems could havedistracted the students from learning the fundamental chemical engineering principles.The presentation will include an introduction to some of the material on the website and a briefsummary of the workshop content and initial beta testing results.

Citation
Format

Komives, C., & Prince, M. J., & Good, T. A., & Simon, L., & O'Connell, J. P., & Chalmers, J. J., & Fernandez, E. (2011, June), Biology Across the Curriculum: Preparing Students for a Career in the Life Sciences Paper presented at 2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Vancouver, BC. 10.18260/1-2--17570

TY  - CPAPER
AB  -  Biology across the curriculum: Preparing students for a career in the life sciencesAddition of biological applications into the chemical engineering undergraduate curriculum isbecoming more common now, in a response to the pervasive use of biology in more and moreaspects of modern technology. Likewise, as recommended in the National Academy ofEngineering’s, “Educating the Engineer of 2020”, “Engineering schools should introduceinterdisciplinary learning in the undergraduate environment, rather than having it as anexclusive feature of the graduate programs.” Thus, including biological problems inundergraduate courses serves two purposes, namely, to teach students to apply their fundamentalengineering principles to new and different fields and also to help prepare more students foreventual careers in the life sciences.The Bioengineering Educational Materials Bank has been in operation since early in 2007 withproblems for the Material and Energy Balance Course. Since then five additional core courseshave been added: Kinetics and Reactor Design; Process Dynamics and Control; Heat and MassTransfer; Fluid Dynamics; and Thermodynamics. Workshops were held for faculty to learnbasic principles of biology and how engineering principles are applied in many different aspectsof modern biotechnology, from kinetics of biological reactions to fluid transfer and processdynamics problems in whole organisms. Problems are organized by textbook sections relevantfor each course. There are close to 200 problems posted on the website and the solutions to theproblems are available only to registered faculty. To date the website has had over 1100registrations by students and faculty, including faculty from chemical engineering departmentsfrom around the world.Beta testing is in progress for the newly posted course materials. To date, the data has beenanalyzed only for the material and energy balance course problems. For that study, 199 studentsfrom six universities were tested with a set of simple bio and non-bio concept questions, inaddition to questions about familiarity with the material. Data showed that students from classesthat included the BioEMB problems were able to perform better on the bio-based problems thanstudents whose teachers did not include the BioEMB problems in their course. Additionally, theperformance on the non-bio questions did not show statistical differences in performance acrossthe sites that would have suggested that inclusion of the additional BioEMB problems could havedistracted the students from learning the fundamental chemical engineering principles.The presentation will include an introduction to some of the material on the website and a briefsummary of the workshop content and initial beta testing results.
AU  - Claire Komives
AU  - Michael J. Prince
AU  - Theresa A. Good
AU  - Laurent Simon
AU  - John P. O'Connell
AU  - Jeffrey John Chalmers
AU  - Erik Fernandez
CY  - Vancouver, BC
DA  - 2011/06/26
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Biology Across the Curriculum: Preparing Students for a Career in the Life Sciences
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/17570
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--17570
ER  -