The VaNTH Bioengineering Curriculum Project

The NSF-sponsored VaNTH Engineering Research Center in Bioengineering Educational Technologies is developing a website, www.vanth.org/curriculum, to provide a forum for ideas about bioengineering curriculum. Two elements of that site are: 1) a listing of recommended core content, as opposed to core courses, for biomedical engineering undergraduate programs, and 2) recommendations for creation of curricula in terms of both content and pedagogy. This presentation addresses these two area. Our recommendations are intended to allow programs to meet a set of standard criteria that will allow industry, in particular, to understand what a biomedical engineer is, while allowing universities to meet local constraints and take advantage of their own strengths. Feedback from a broad cross-section of the bioengineering community is now needed to achieve agreement on core elements of a biomedical engineering curriculum.