2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Industry Perspectives on Professional and Design Skills of Bioengineering Senior Students

Presented at College Industry Partnerships Division (CIP) Technical Session 1

Professional and design skill development is an essential part of engineering education (Hadgraft & Kolmos, 2020), yet, according to industry feedback, many students struggle to satisfactorily develop these skills during their time as undergraduates (Hirudayaraj 2021, Kolmos & Hoolgard, 2019). Despite numerous approaches to improve students’ preparedness for the work environment through academia-industry collaborations (see Shah & Gillen, 2023), the perceptions of industry experts on strengths and weaknesses of current senior engineering students remain mainly unspecified in the literature. In this work, we are using a systematic approach and framework to examine the research question, “What are the industry perspectives on assessed strengths and challenges related to professional and engineering design skills of bioengineering seniors?”
Building on prior coursework, the senior design capstone experience provides students with the opportunity to apply concepts and develop important skills necessary for transition to their professional careers. In the bioengineering undergraduate programs at [name of institution], the senior design experience culminates with an event called Bioengineering Day (BE-Day), in which senior students present posters on their design project. Students have the unique opportunity to interact one-on-one with industrial professionals to discuss their projects. After visiting with students at their posters, industry judges are asked to provide feedback on specific performance indicators, such as visual and oral communication, engineering design, and self-management skills. In this study, we investigated which skills were cited as a strength of senior bioengineering students and which skills need improvement. Coupling hierarchical clustering with industry reviews from two consecutive years, we analyzed industry feedback on aspects of student performance in senior design projects, extracting distinct skill subsets. By applying the Euclidean distance metric and average linkage method, we produced visualizations – a heatmap and dendrogram – for categorizing students' skills based on industry-specific criteria.
Results indicated that the highest-scoring performance indicators included the overall quality of the posters and oral presentations. Furthermore, students excelled at verbal communication and professional behavior. Students also demonstrated excellence in describing the background and needs of their project. Areas for improvement were consistent between years and included students’ abilities to describe the “limitations of their work”. Industry professionals also rated students’ “ability to implement their work as proposed” as relatively lower than other performance indicators. Here, we gain an understanding of industry perspectives on senior design skill development that will help inform curricular improvements to close the gap between industry expectations and academic preparation of engineering graduates.

Authors

Dr. Reem Khojah University of California, San Diego [biography]

Reem Khojah serves as an assistant teaching professor in the Shu Chien-Gene Lay Department of Bioengineering at the University of California, San Diego. With experience in instructing bioengineering at introductory and graduate levels, she actively contributes to enhancing accessibility to research tools for undergraduate research experiences. Her primary focus is on optimizing engineering education through data-driven pre-and post-lecture formative assessments and designing AI-proof assignments. Her educational background includes a Ph.D. in Bioengineering from the University of California, Los Angeles. Reem has also engaged in post-doctoral research at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the University of California, Irvine.
Dr. Alyssa Catherine Taylor University of California, San Diego [biography]

Alyssa C. Taylor is an Associate Teaching Professor in the Shu Chien-Gene Lay Department of Bioengineering at the University of California San Diego. She was a faculty member at the University of Washington from 2010 – 2022 before joining University of California San Diego. Dr. Taylor has over thirteen years of experience teaching across bioengineering laboratory, introductory, and capstone design classes. She received a B.S. in biological systems engineering at the University of California, Davis, and a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering at the University of Virginia.
Dr. Taylor’s teaching contributions have been recognized through multiple teaching awards including the 2020 Distinguished Teaching Award from the University of Washington, the 2021 University of Washington College of Engineering Faculty Teaching Award, and the 2022 ASEE Pacific Northwest Section Outstanding Teaching Award. Dr. Taylor seeks to prepare students to engage in Universal Design, considering accessibility in their design work. Dr. Taylor aims to foster the development of inclusive, thoughtful engineering graduates who will integrate their technical and professional skills to positively impact society and she is excited to contribute to the educational journey of engineering students.
Dr. Isgard S. Hueck University of California, San Diego [biography]

Dr. Isgard Hueck
(Ph.D. in Higher Ed/ Leadership & Policy; M.Sc. in Bioengineering; M. Phil. in Education)
Affiliations: UCSD - Dept of Bioengineering, Whitaker Institute of Biomedical Engineering & UCSD School of Medicine; Moores Cancer Center.

Born and raised in Germany, Isgard Hueck studied Biology at the Wilhelms- University in Munster and received her license as Cyto-Pathologist in Cologne, Germany, in 1987. After years of clinical work in hematology, cancer diagnosis and therapy, Isgard Hueck received a Master of Science degree in Bio-Medical Engineering in 1998 from the University of Applied Sciences in Aachen, Germany. In conjunction with the University California in San Diego, Dr. Hueck conducted biomedical research focussing on long-term medical implants, angiogenesis in diabetes, and stem cell research. She has published in scientific journals like Microcirculation and the American Journal of Physiology. She contributed two chapters to the Springer Verlag Books 'Applications in Stem Cell Engineering' and 'Biological, Physical, and Technical Basics of Cell Engineering.' In 2012, Dr. Hueck was recruited as the Program Assessment Specialist for the Dept of Bioeng., UCSD, leading continuous improvement processes in engineering education and for the Accreditation Board of Engineering and Technology. In 2022, Isgard Hueck completed her Ph.D. in leadership in higher education with a focus on engineering education. Dr. Isgard Hueck founded the Office of Industrial Relations (IRO) in the Department of Bioengineering at UCSD to provide engineering students better opportunities to build close industry relationships within the academic education. In addition, Dr. Hueck engages in enrichment programs for "learning beyond the classroom". She is actively assessing and researching opportunities to improve eduction for the modern and holistic engineer of tomorrow.

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