Building a more diverse biomedical engineering workforce: Biomedical engineering at the university of the district of Columbia, a historically black college & university

Abstract

Biomedical Engineering (BME) is a new, multidisciplinary, and rapidly growing field, however, the BME Workforce suffers from limited ethnic and gender diversity. Despite the demand and growth of this new field due to its public health importance, only 4 out of the 107 Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) nationwide offers a Bachelor's of Science (B.S.) in Bio-Engineering related fields. In order to contribute to a growing BME Workforce, HBCUs need to react and offer more degree-programs relevant to BME. At the University of the District of Columbia (UDC), an HBCU and the District's only public institution for higher learning, we have recently established a new, degree program: Bachelor of Science in Biomedical Engineering (B.S. in BME) full-board approved in Fall 2014, with program activities initiated in Fall 2015. The educational goal of this program is to enhance the quality and diversity of the BME Workforce via student professional development, new and relevant BME courses, and BME scholarly activities (e.g., guest lectures and journal club sessions), ultimately to increase the number of ethnic minorities pursuing careers and degrees in BME. Through our program activities, we are aiming to meet the nation's demand to contribute to a diverse BME workforce, directed towards solving problems in human health. A secondary, but related goal, is to increase the diversity of STEM-related fields. This paper summarizes our initial, but encouraging, BME activity-related findings. However, this study will be longitudinal (on a multiple year time period) to observe the true outcomes of our initiative.

Biomedical Engineering Education: Ukrainian Trajectory Through the Prism of World Experience. Status and Perspectives

“…Papers concerning the educational issues in the BME field, published for the last 15 years, prove the continuity of intensive discussing both global and regional tendencies and issues in this area. Note that such discussions are initiated by experts from the developed countries [2][3][4][5][6][7] as well as from the developing ones [8][9][10][11][12][13]. This issue is also of great interest in Ukraine [14,15].…”

“…Публікації з проблем освіти у галузі БМІ за останні 15 років свідчать про продовження інтенсивного обговорення як глобальних, так і регіональних тенденцій і проблем у цій сфері. Зазначимо, що ініціюють такого роду дискусії фахівці як із розвинутих країн [2][3][4][5][6][7], так і з країн, що розвиваються [8][9][10][11][12][13]. Ця тема є актуальною і для України [14,15].…”

Institutional and Faculty Partnerships to Promote Learner Preparedness for Health Professions Education

“…These institutions and their graduates work to overcome disadvantages in early childhood education and school quality, lack of role models, financial stressors, bias, stereotyping, and racism. In particular, to combat receiving fewer funding opportunities than PWIs [ 32 ], HBCUs and NASIs work to develop diverse research portfolios in STEM [ 33 ].…”

Recruitment process that attracts underrepresented students in graduate science and medical education programs

“…This situation strongly reveals that we need Black/African Americans and Hispanic/Latino with education and training in science and medicine [ 2 , 11 ]. To prepare, institutions are taking aggressive steps to maximize the diversity of academic health professionals, administrators, and health-care providers who participate in quality health-care initiatives and programs [ 16 , 17 ]. At the University of the District of Columbia, they offer a new Bachelor of Science in Biomedical Engineering.…”

“…At the University of the District of Columbia, they offer a new Bachelor of Science in Biomedical Engineering. The educational goal of this program is to enhance the multiculturalism of the biomedical workforce via student recruitment and professional development [ 16 ]. Enrolling students in science as undergraduates may lead to an increase in graduate education matriculation [ 16 ].…”