The undergraduate bioengineering curriculum will offer students more flexibility and opportunities to take bioengineering electives starting in fall 2014.
The curriculum changes aim to allow students to enroll in more classes focused on bioengineering rather than classes in related fields such as chemistry or life science, said Daniel Kamei, the vice chair of UCLA’s Department of Bioengineering.
Kamei said student feedback about the curriculum prompted the changes.
The additional electives will not dramatically change the number of units required for the major, but the number of required bioengineering electives will increase from three to seven, Kamei said.
“Whenever we make changes, we make sure we maintain the rigorousness of the program while increasing the flexibility our students have with classes,” Kamei said.
Classes that are currently required, such as Life Sciences 4: “Genetics” and Physics 4BL: “Physics Laboratory for Scientists and Engineers: Electricity and Magnetism”, will be removed from the major requirements to make way for additional bioengineering electives.
Students entering the bioengineering major in fall 2014 will have to follow the new curriculum, while current students may continue with the old curriculum or opt in to new one through a petition.
“The faculty have been discussing the need to have students take more bioengineering electives for quite some time, but (they) needed more people to teach and create these classes,” Kamei said.
With a steady increase in the number of joint bioengineering faculty and the planned addition of a new assistant professor this coming spring, the department is now in a good position to change the curriculum to address that need, Kamei said.
Aishani Ataliwala, a second-year bioengineering student, said she welcomes the increased flexibility in the major and said she will apply to the new curriculum.
“I’m happy about (the change) because the old curriculum was more pre-med focused,” Ataliwala said. “The new one offers more flexibility with what classes you can take and, as I am not pre-med, it suits me better.”
Some students, however, have said that they will stay on in the current curriculum because they think it is better suited for medical school preparation.
Minh Pham, a third-year bioengineering student, said he intends to continue with the current curriculum because he thinks that the current curriculum’s required classes will better prepare him for medical school.
While those classes will no longer be required in the new curriculum, students may still take them as part of their technical breadth requirement , Kamei said. He added that this change puts the choice of classes in students’ hands.
Kamei said the department hopes to continue to be forward-looking when structuring the UCLA bioengineering curriculum.