BE Board:Undergraduate curriculum liaison

For current website see begradboard.mit.edu

Description

The BE Undergraduate Curriculum Committee Representative is required to attend all the curriculum committee meetings (3-4 meetings per term) and report back to the BE Board. He/she is encouraged to suggest agenda items for the committee on behalf of the BE Board. The representative is expected to speak on behalf of the BE graduate students regarding curriculum, advising, community/culture, and other issues at the regular meetings. Special projects are often organized through subcommittees, which include some permanent members of the committee, along with additional ad hoc members who have special insight and expertise.

My statement of intent during elections - lest I forget :)

Some specific goals I have for the position:

1. Create opportunities for graduate students to participate in the development of curriculum. Students pursuing academic work will develop courses throughout their career, yet have few opportunities to participate in this process during the BE graduate program. The development of a new major provides an especially good opportunity for this type of experience. I will develop new avenues for students to voluntarily participate. One good example of this is BE.109, which is being developed in part on the OpenWetWare wiki: BE.109
2. Incorporate a "responsible biological engineering" course in the curriculum. Requests for an ethics-type course specific to biological engineering have been made at the previous two BE retreats. I believe that such a course is critical for biological engineers and will push on this issue with the undergraduate curriculum committee.
3. Maintain a reasonable TA requirement: As the number of BE courses increases with the new major, there will be an increase in the amount of TA hours required to support these courses. I will work to represent the best interests of the BE graduate student community during this transition.

Current Activities

Graduate student participation/education in curriculum development

Some (early) thoughts:

• Online collborative space to lower barriers for contribution in course development. (e.g. BE.109)
  • More specifically, if you were so motivated to create a module for BE.109, you could spec it out, post some protocols and a description of why the module is relevant on the BE.109 wiki page. If the instructors liked it they could flesh it out more, incorporate it into the class, and throw some credit your way. If not maybe some other school will come accross it on the web and implement it, who knows. Not sure if anyone has this level of motivation...

• Education seminar series.
  • Might be nice to have a seminar series which would have talks by:
  1. BE profs to talk about new courses
     • i.e. if a course is being taught for the first time might be interesting to see what the content will be and how it will integrate into the 'big picture' of the overall BE curriculum. (This might even improve enrollment, could encourage undergrads to come by to learn more about courses)
     • Might also be cool to do this for established courses every few years, just to make sure the curriculum is not getting stale.
  2. Professors who study education directly to present on techniques, what other institutions do, etc.
  • Is there enough interest in stuff like this?

"Responsible biological engineering" course

At the retreat I believe the rebuff to the request for an ethics-type course was that HASS requirements are set at the institute level. Have to look into this a little more, although BE is able to define two HASS CI-M subjects (Communication Intensive in the Major). These are intended to "teach the specific forms of written, oral, and/or visual communication appropriate to the field's professional and academic culture." Not sure how much leeway the department has with those. Will probably pursue this at both the department and institute levels.

Useful Resources

Web Links

• Good page of links to other resources
• Richard Felder's column Random Thoughts from Chemical Engineering Education
• MIT BE Undergraduate Curriculum

Books

• Designing and Assessing Courses and Curricula: A Practical Guide (Robert M. Diamond)
• Charting Your Course: How to Prepare to Teach More Effectively (Richard Pregent)

Feel like helping??

During the nominations it seemed like there were a number of students who were interested in participating in the curriculum development process. I'll take as much input/direct help that people are willing to give, so if you have a specific request or would like to help with one of the projects above, please let me know.

Contact

Jason Kelly