A novel approach to physiology education for biomedical engineering students

It is challenging for biomedical engineering programs to incorporate an indepth study of the systemic interdependence of cells, tissues, and organs into the rigorous mathematical curriculum that is the cornerstone of engineering education. To be sure, many biomedical engineering programs require their students to enroll in anatomy and physiology courses. Often, however, these courses tend to provide bulk information with only a modicum of live tissue experimentation. In the Electrical, Computer, and Biomedical Engineering Department of the University of Rhode Island, this issue is addressed to some extent by implementing an experiential physiology laboratory that addresses research in electrophysiology and biomechanics. The two-semester project-based course exposes the students to laboratory skills in dissection, instrumentation, and physiological measurements. In a novel approach to laboratory intensive learning, the course meets on six Sundays throughout the semester for an 8-h laboratory period. At the end of the course, students are required to prepare a two-page conference paper and submit the results to the Northeast Bioengineering Conference (NEBC) for consideration. Students then travel to the conference location to present their work. Since the inception of the course in the fall of 2003, we have collectively submitted 22 papers to the NEBC. This article will discuss the nature of the experimentation, the types of experiments performed, the goals of the course, and the metrics used to determine the success of the students and the research.