2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Traditional approaches to graduate training have a strong focus on technical and research skills but often lack mechanisms to help students frame their work in the context of innovation, translation, and societal impact. To address this need, we designed an “Impact Training” program and integrated it into the core curriculum of our new PhD program in our Department of Bioengineering. The Impact Training program aims to: (i) help students visualize themselves as drivers of societal impact from the outset of their training, (ii) engage all graduate students in communication, innovation, and translation activities, (iii) train students to use design thinking to advance their research, translation, and career goals, and (iv) demonstrate that an innovation mindset can fuel basic research as well as translation and innovation activities. This Work in Progress paper describes our novel implementation approaches and early indicators of trainee engagement.

The topical content of our Impact Training program focuses on the intersection of three key areas: design thinking, communication, and innovation and entrepreneurship. These topics are often taught in an isolated, à la carte, approach, or neglected entirely from graduate programs in science and engineering. Instead, we have found that each of these subjects are connected by a Venn-diagram of essential elements that create a throughline towards enhancing overall impact in science and engineering. For example, while design thinking was originally conceptualized to ideate great products that best meet user needs, the process resonates with best practices in science communication. This includes beginning with a focus on the user, in this case, the audience. Indeed, the entire process of design thinking can be leveraged to enhance the impact of the entire process of science communication. This encourages a focus on audience and needs, using quick and simple, yet effective, prototyping to test ideas and get feedback, and, ultimately, refining those ideas and solutions through multiple iterations of the process.

In a just in time training approach, trainees learn concepts immediately before they must be deployed to accomplish authentic, meaningful tasks. Examples include lectures or workshops on conference talks or posters right before priority conferences, or courses and workshops on grant and proposal writing when trainees are actively writing or preparing a grant. This just in time strategy increases trainee engagement and retention because the perceived return on investment is high and the material is not only theoretically learned but implemented in real time. Integrating Impact Training into the core curriculum of a graduate program of study offers a strategic advantage vs à la carte courses. Because students are progressing along a common pathway, they typcially encounter key milestones and important opportunities at similar timings. For example, they often complete their dissertation meetings, reports, and exams along a similar timeframe and apply for certain funding opportunities (NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program, NIH F31) at similar times. These authentic milestones[1] and tasks inform the delivery and timing of key concepts and principles with the Impact Training program.

As an example, to prepare our trainees for a conference talk, we strategically walk through the design thinking phases (Figure 1). Beginning by defining our communication goals as well as the needs and goals of our audience. We then create quick prototypes for general narrative flow using storyboards, after which we test the evolving prototypes by sharing in small groups via short “story pitches” that describe the narrative arc. We engage in peer feedback and apply newly acquired insights to inform the next iteration of the entire process. With each iteration, we increase in sophistication until the presentation arrives at its final form.