Learning and Teaching

Sending College Students Back to High School

It wasn't easy explaining the technical fine points of "Functional Biomaterials" to high-school students, but the UMBC seniors in professor Julia Ross's Introduction to Biomedical Engineering figured out a way.

It's part of the challenge of the senior-level elective class--not only do the UMBC chemical and biochemical engineering majors have to research a "hot" topic in biomedical engineering, they also have to translate it into understandable terms and present it to a high-school science class. It's an outreach program with several layers of benefits.

"It is an exercise in problem-based learning and communication for the UMBC students," says Ross. "It's a challenge for them to explain high-level technical ideas to students with little technical background. And it gives the high-school students exposure to new ideas, engineering as a career, and also provides great role models for the high schoolers as there are many women and minorities in the class."

The UMBC students tackled such hot topics as functional biomaterials, biomechanics, bioinformatics, drug delivery (controlled release of pharmaceuticals), and tissue engineering.

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