For a second year in a row, the UT Austin Department of Biomedical Engineering received multiple seed grants from the Cockrell School of Engineering. The program, which is an initiative under the NSF-funded Center for Equity in Engineering, supports projects that aim to promote broadening participation in engineering.
One of the projects was a part of the first round of grants in 2022 and will receive continuing funding. Led by Ph.D. candidate Noah Stern, “Curating Department Specific Peer-Led Teaching Assistant Support,” is designed to help TAs feel connected and part of a community. The program is specifically put together with a focus on encouraging open communication, sharing positive/inclusive learning practices, and developing strategies to manage being a TA with the multitude of other responsibilities that graduate students must juggle.
"The TA support program has allowed us to lay the foundation for a more connected and supportive community of graduate students here in BME and we are really excited to continue developing this program further. We are grateful that BME and the Cockrell School are beginning to recognize the gap in support for TAs across the university and we are hopeful our program is a positive step towards closing that gap,” said Stern.
New Programs
B-SEED: Biomedical Scientific Education and Equitable Design
Olivia Lanier, Ph.D. is a Provost Early Career Fellow who worked with undergraduate students from the UT Austin BMES student organization to create B-SEED.
The goal of B-SEED is to supplement traditional undergraduate engineering education through practical and hands-on learning techniques that connect their studies to real-world applications, mentorship, and connection. The group aims to see the effect that these three values have on the retention and performance of students from historically excluded backgrounds in engineering.
There are weekly journal clubs for undergraduates where students focus on an article that deals with health disparity. In addition, there are seminars led by physicians that focus on medical devices they use daily and how engineers could improve the design or create similar designs for low-resource settings. The program also hopes to bridge the gap between engineering and the clinical setting through open communication with clinicians and discovering what they like or dislike about current devices and therapies.
Science Communication as a Fundamental Step to Broaden Participation in Engineering
This program is intended to address the gap in formal training in science communication in graduate students in engineering by providing a workshop with Dr. Ana Maria Porras, a science communication expert and biomedical engineering professor at the University of Florida. Science communication is a critical part of broadening participation in engineering, yet graduate students receive no formal training on how to communicate their science to the public. The group hopes to equip graduate students with the tools they need to communicate their research effectively at conferences, outreach events, recruitment events, and every-day conversations with the general public. All engineering graduate students are invited but they will have to reserve their seat at the workshop with limited seating. The program leaders were inspired by the WIPSS (Works in Progress Student Seminar) program and how that was aiming to improve their ability to present research within the Department of Biomedical Engineering in a casual setting.
Support Undergraduate Research in Biomedical Engineering
The Graduate Undergraduate Research Union (GURU) is an organization dedicated to connecting undergraduates with research opportunities in the UT Austin Department of Biomedical Engineering. The group hosts workshops, recruiting events, and poster competitions every year to increase overall knowledge of departmental research within the undergraduate community. The seed grant will fund the organization’s annual GURU LINK Event and poster competition this year. The LINK Event includes lab tours, a Q&A panel with current biomedical engineering researchers, and a poster session hosted by recruiting graduate students.
The program overcame huge hurdles over the past few years after it was almost completely disbanded during the pandemic. No one could work in the labs and the group lost official organization status within the Cockrell School of Engineering (CSE). Throughout 2023, students worked tirelessly to reinstate GURU as an official CSE student organization, gain funding, and increase their presence in the department. All of their hard efforts paid off, resulting in doubled participation at events.
Overall, 14 student and staff-led projects were part of the second year of the Cockrell School Seed Grants program. Projects received $3,000 to $5,000 in funding and must be led an undergraduate student, graduate student, student organization, postdoctoral researcher, and/or staff member.
WRITTEN BY JOSHUA KLEINSTREUER
