Meetings

Most Mondays, 4:30 - 5:30 p.m., in Foege N130
For details, please see the schedule for the current quarter.

Instructors

Your laboratory advisor
and

Alyssa Taylor Foege Rm 430L 206-543-5833 actaylor@u.washington.edu Office hours: by appointment	Christopher Neils Foege/BIOE N310E Phone: 206-685-3021 Campus mail: Box 355061 cmneils@u.washington.edu Office hours: Mon 3-4 and by appt.
Dianne Hendricks Foege Rm 430M dgh5@u.washington.edu Office hours: by appointment

Course Summary

Bioengineers are engineers trained to be leaders in finding new ways to prevent, diagnose, and treat disease and improve the lives of the sick and healthy. BIOEN 401-402, the required 13-credit Bioengineering senior project course, assists in the transition from student to engineer by providing training in design and experimentation in a laboratory setting. This course facilitates successful design experiences for undergraduates, serving as the capstone of an undergraduate education in Bioengineering.

Projects may be conceived by individual students or may be developed in collaboration with experts at the UW or in industry. Each student project may stand alone, or may be part of a larger research and development project.

Course structure and grading
BIOEN 402 is an independent study course, in which the student is registered under one faculty advisor. Students may be co-advised, but registration remains under one advisor and the two faculty are required to coordinate and agree upon the grading. The faculty member under whom the student is registered actually submits and signs for the grade. Each student receives a grade of "N" or "No grade yet" for quarters before the report is finished. When the report has been finished, the faculty advisor assigns a grade that replaces all of the N grades.

The BIOEN 402 grade is based on performance of the entire design project, and completion of a written report. The report will include technical details, results, design decisions made by the student, and assessments of economic and societal implications. The report is a requirement for graduation. It is customary and strongly recommended, but not strictly required, that this paper is completed by the end of the last term in BIOEN 402 or 403. The BIOEN 402 and 403 syllabi contain a grading rubric that is applied by the individual advisor or co-advisors as the case may be.

Students are required to make progress on the projects each term. Acceptable progress is defined by the expectations of the faculty advisor, and will depend on the project itself as well as the hurdles encountered therein. Meeting at least monthly with your faculty advisor is highly recommended, to show the progress that you have made.

A committee of faculty members approves each capstone proposal prior to the beginning of BIOEN 402 and 403. This ensures that each student is proposing a sufficiently rigorous design project, providing quality control and consistency across the department. A faculty committee may also analyze selected reports as part of an annual capstone course review. Neither the review of proposals nor the review of reports affects any course grade, but the results might require you to make changes to your project plan. However, given the level of review provided in BIOEN 401, such changes are unlikely.

There is also a weekly group meeting associated with BIOEN 402, which includes all of the seniors and is led by an instructor under whom the students are not registered. This instructor provides help with writing and presentation, along with good counsel in the event that the student hits a snag in lab and doesn't know how to deal with it. Ten percent of the course grade is based on participation in this section and your submission of report drafts in a timely manner.