I see few faulty comments on what appears in the Moment but I believe in dialog and a shared search for truth. I don't think I "own" the truth, but I would like to help find it. Specifically, I want to comment, personally and not to state an official position, on Rishi Gupta's Major Thoughts [Apr. 5, p. 3] which were about the bioengineering program and how I behaved as advisor to the program.
I recommend to most students that they explore bioengineering by majoring in a traditional engineering discipline, using electives - and, where necessary, petitions to substitute courses- to see how that discipline interacts with problems in biology and medicine. I don't believe that one can become useful and professional by looking at all the ways in which all engineering can impact all biology and medicine, and I am critical of most programs in other schools that try to do so. I do not believe that chemical engineering is the only or the best traditional discipline to use in this way; it is one suitable discipline. It is ironic that the finest bioengineering graduate programs in the country would rather accept engineers with traditional undergraduate degrees than they would bioengineers. Bioengineering as it exists here, now, is suitable neither for commencing professional work or for going on to graduate school. It is good preparation for medical school if a student is stronger in quantitative science than he or she is in the softer sciences and the humanities. I hope that neither Mr. Gupta nor any other student will be surprised to read these views; I articulate them regularly.
Mr. Gupta isn't quite right in assessing course availability: Prof. Ateshian in ME teaches biomechanics; Prof. Teich in EE teaches a sensory systems course (but not in '9194-95); Prof. Pilla teaches a BE course, Bioelectrochemistry; I teach Bioengineering Principles and Artificial Organs, neither in '9194-95 though, because I was on leave in the Fall. Several courses in Pharmaceutical Engineering, which is closely connected to other chemical facets of bioengineering, were taught this year. Several seniors are taking a course in medical decision making, this semester. Notwithstanding these facts, I think that we should have a real core of bioengineering courses if we are going to have a strong bioengineering major, and I think the approach to composing this core should be far more catholic than it has been. For the first time in my long time here, there seems to be a sufficient effort underway to achieve a core of graduate courses, from which corresponding undergraduate courses could flow one or two years later. But this is little solace for the "... thoughts of a graduating senior."
Mr. Gupta misrepresents the advising crisis to which he alludes. I cannot find anything in the catalog that says a student can substitute biology for Physics IV. (It is true that such a provision was allowed the chemical engineers, but as far as I can tell, even that was not listed in the catalog, and it's the catalog that I rely on.) The substitution was never intended for bioengineers. It wasn't intended for them because Barnard biology, while a good course on its own terms, is not as quantitative and molecular as what we think bioengineers should take; thus bioengineers are required -as the catalog plainly says- to take Biology C1005,C1501 in term 5. The substitution of biology wasn't intended for bioengineers also because we think that modern physics is a useful basis for quantitative understanding of modern molecular biology. If I recall the disagreement correctly, it was Mr. Gupta, not I, who was calling the catalog incorrect, saying that some freshman- sophomore advisors countermanded it.
It is easier to veer away from the new, exciting and unformed. The bioengineering road is less well paved and the work of both those who make and improve the road and those who travel it is harder for each increment of intellectual and professional distance traversed. I hope that the long-term rewards for those who travel this road --in the program or by electing special departmental sequences-- will be great and that the adventure will be remembered more for its excitement than for its bumps.
Edward F. Leonard