4

Summary description of the

Joint Graduate Program in Biomedical Engineering:

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University

Additional information is at

.unc.edu/academics/grad.html

Overview

Joint d epartmen t: .unc.edu/ The Joint Graduate Program is currently housed within the new Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering. This is an academic department co-located at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) and NC State University (NCSU) and was established on December 1, 2003, linking the School of Medicine at UNC to the College of Engineering at NCSU. The department has administrative offices on both campuses (NCSU: 2147 Burlington Labs; UNC: MacNider 152).

Undergraduate p rograms: At NCSU, a BS in Biomedical Engineering and a graduate minor are offered. At UNC, the BME concentration in the Applied Sciences undergraduate degree program is offered. Discussion of a possible merger of the two undergraduate programs is ongoing.

Joint graduate p rogram: At both universities, we offer joint MS and PhD degrees through the Joint Graduate Biomedical Engineering Program. The initiation of this program is the result of a multiyear process of planning and development that began with faculty at UNC and NCSU. The program underwent a series of administrative approvals in Chapel Hill at the departmental, school, college and university levels, and obtained final approval by the state-wide Board of Governors of the University of North Carolina system on May 9, 2003.

Core purpose of the Joint Graduate BME program

Biomedical engineering: Biomedical engineering programs emphasize applications of science and engineering, quantitative and mathematical analyses, systems design, biotechnology and computer-based techniques to solve problems in biomedical sciences and medicine.

Mission : The mission of the Department is to provide leadership through exceptional educational programs and experiences that prepare engineers and scientists to meet the challenges of biomedical discovery and applications of engineering to medicine. By research and entrepreneurship, the faculty, students, and staff aim to accumulate, generate, and disseminate biomedical engineering knowledge to improve health care for the benefit of the people of North Carolina, the nation, and the world.

Some biomedical engineering statistics: At the time of creation of the Joint Graduate Program, the US Medical Technology Industry produced $78 B, had exports of $17 B, trade surplus of $7 B and over 300,000 jobs with annual job growth of 6 %. The average starting salaries in 2001 were 62.6 K for MS graduates. Of 6,000 companies, 80 % had fewer than 50 employees and about 10% of sales. The R&D expenditures averaged 13 % of sales, which was over four times the US industrial average. The American Association for Engineering Education reported that BME has led the engineering disciplines in the percentage of degrees awarded to women.

Why a joint program? The BME program at UNC, which has long been housed in the School of Medicine, is one of the earliest BME programs in the nation. Since 1968, the program awarded a total of 163 MS degrees and 94 PhD degrees before the Joint Program was formed. In the decades after the UNC program began, numerous new BME programs were started at universities in the US. In more recent years, the UNC Provost planned a major development of the BME program. He committed substantial new recurring funds for BME to be allocated increasingly over several years starting in approximately 2003. The Dean of Medicine at UNC with advice from outside consultants, decided that closer ties with an engineering school were needed. The large engineering school at NCSU was an obvious choice because a number of faculty at NCSU and UNC had already formed scientific interactions and since NCSU and UNC are part of the same statewide university system.

From the point of view of the NCSU faculty in the College of Engineering interested in biomedical engineering, a merger with the School of Medicine at UNC would increase ties to biomedical research performed in Chapel Hill. The UNC School of Medicine has been highly ranked in amounts of NIH grants awarded for basic science and clinical research projects and has had the largest number of NIH roadmap grants. Also, since UNC was already authorized by the Board of Governors to offer the MS and PhD in biomedical engineering but NCSU was not authorized, extension of these degrees to NCSU enabled students located at NCSU to earn BME graduate degrees.

Also, a joint program can be stronger than a program at a single university because the total facilities are greater, the combined faculty can provide a wider range of opportunities for research projects and mentorship for students, and the best prospective student applicants may be more attracted to a program that is within both an engineering school and a medical school.

The Joint Graduate Program can serve as an academic link between the applied sciences, basic life sciences and medical programs at UNC, and the engineering, science, and veterinary programs at NCSU. It can serve as a focal point for major collaborative research projects. Cooperation between these major universities can leverage scarce resources and avoid duplication of effort. Distance learning technologies that are used in the program can potentially bring biomedically-related training programs to other units within the statewide system.

What are the distinguishing factors of operation?

Two universities: The program is physically located at two universities. Faculty members in the Joint Department are formally members of the faculty at both universities and will have appointments to the graduate schools at both universities. Each faculty member has a home university, which is the basis of tenure for that member.

Graduate students have a home university and access to both universities : Each graduate student is registered at a home university, which is to maintain a full transcript and to process documents for teaching assistantships and research assistantships. The home university is usually the one that administers the grant that provides financial support for the student. Registration for courses listed in the catalog at the other university is accomplished by an existing process of interinstitutional registration. The registrars offices have established a procedure of place-holding for each graduate student in the Joint Program whose home is the other university. This allows all students access to libraries, athletics and facilities at both universities. The procedure is described at .unc.edu/resources/rpm27.php. Tuition is paid to the home university. We plan to perform on a 3-year basis an analysis of the cross registrations and any net imbalance in tuition and fees collected. From that analysis, the academic affairs offices of both universities will determine if any adjustments are needed.

Distance learning and teleconferencing: There are high-quality teleconference and distance learning facilities located in the BME spaces at both universities. These are used for joint meetings, seminars and classes.

Academics: Proposals for changes or improvements in the academic requirements for the MS or PhD degrees are recommended by a joint graduate curriculum committee composed of BME faculty at both universities. Applications from prospective students submitted to either university are evaluated by a single joint admissions committee. Procedures for graduate advisors, advisory committees, qualification examinations and academic requirements are the same for all students. Where a difference in the requirements of the two graduate schools exists, the curriculum committee and graduate director seek the least restrictive common requirement. We may request that the school with a more restrictive requirement consider relaxation of the requirement. The guiding philosophy is that all students, whether they are home based at one university or the other, are treated the same in terms of their academic enrichment. The diplomas will contain signatures and seals from both universities.

Administrative: There is a single BME departmental chair. There is a single person who serves as director of graduate studies in BME at one university and director of graduate programs in BME at the other university. Actions on promotion of faculty are recommended by a joint promotions committee within the department. If indicated, promotional recommendations are sent by the chair to either the School of Medicine at UNC or the College of Engineering at NCSU, depending on which of these is the faculty member’s home institution. Promotion actions at all levels above the department follow the procedures already in place at the respective university.

What were the important barriers to creating the program and how have they been dealt with?

Approvals: The proposed program was consistent with the recommendations of consultants of the Dean of the School of Medicine and the Provost at UNC. Also the program was supported by unanimous agreement of the BME faculty at UNC.

Funding: The Joint Graduate Program officially began when the Board of Governors authorized UNC to extend the MS and PhD degrees to NCSU in 2003. This action alone did not commit additional funds. Both the preexisting BME department at UNC Chapel Hill and a department that was created temporarily at NCSU in the same year in which the Joint Program was created, had faculty lines and commitments from their respective provosts. It was felt those funds were sufficient to immediately operate the Graduate Program jointly at the existing level of enrollment, and that the increase in commitment over the next few years would enable growth. There was a Special Opportunity Award from the Whitaker Foundation that had been granted to the original BME Department. Simultaneously with the creation of the Joint Department, we received approval to continue that grant as a joint award. This enabled hiring of several new BME faculty members at each university.

Parking on a different campus : The campus security offices on both universities arranged to provide free parking passes at their university for any faculty or staff member in the Joint Program who already purchases a pass at the other university. The justification was that a person can only park on one campus at a given time, so they do not need to pay twice.

What's the status of the program at the moment? What are the next steps? What barriers do you see to creating similar programs?

Status: (.unc.edu/faculty/annual_report2005-2006.htm contains the latest departmental report). In full time personnel, the Joint BME Department currently has 22.5 faculty (equal number at each university), 13 staff (equal), 215 undergraduate students (140 at NCSU and 75 at UNC), and 103 graduate students (30 at NCSU and 73 at UNC). There is 2.8 M in recurring funds that come from the state of North Carolina (1.46 M to NCSU and 1.33 M to UNC). There is 3.7 M in active research funding (0.5 M to NCSU and 3.2 M to UNC), most of which comes from extramural sources.

Next steps: We have passed the creation stage and have addressed numerous procedural and organizational issues in forming the Joint Graduate Program. We will finalize the format of the joint diploma, perform the analysis of cross registrations, and perform a full evaluation of the Program for university accreditations. We plan to continue growth of enrollment over the next few years.

Barriers: The amount of new funding available for graduate students to conduct PhD research projects can be a limiting factor for growth.