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Synergizing Research and Cultural Excellence

The Power of Education and Innovation

A Framework for Synergizing Research Excellence and Cultural Excellence in Biomedical Engineering Education

Thursday, October 24, 2024
8:30 AM – 8:45 AM EST
Location: Room 332

Introduction:  We are in the biomedical age. Today, many of the most transformational technological advancements impact human health and well-being by facilitating healthy aging, disease treatment, tissue regeneration, and brain-computer interactions. Optimizing these innovations and ensuring they have an equitable impact in society requires that we educate future leaders to be both academically and culturally excellent. We must also engender an institutional culture and climate that creates conditions for belonging for all and in turn fosters increased innovation and improved problem solving. To create an environment where a diverse group feels included and accepted, we must intentionally develop the skills of bonding, strengthening connections with others who are from different backgrounds, and bridging, strengthening connections with others who share similar characteristics with us. Building bonding and bridging social capital requires one to understand their own knowledge, attitudes, biases and beliefs, engage in welcoming spaces and develop a shared sense of purpose. To that end, we will share the core principles and practices of Thread, a non-profit that harnesses the power of relationships across lines of difference to achieve more equitable outcomes, as well as the work Thread has done with JHU BME to lay the foundation for synergizing research and cultural excellence in biomedical engineering.

Materials and

Methods:  Founded in 2004, initially as a JHU student group, Thread creates places and spaces where people can practice bonding and bridging. Thread enrolls the lowest-performing ninth-graders (average incoming GPA is 0.73) at the lowest-performing Baltimore City Public Schools and commits to them for 10 years. Each freshman is paired with up to four volunteers: university students, small business owners, “empty nesters,” and retirees. Together, they form a Thread Family that does whatever it takes to support the young person, from rides to school, to refurbishing houses, to ice cream on the weekend. Thread also provides programmed spaces like after school tutoring, camping trips and community service outings where staff support students and volunteers bonding and bridging. And to make sure the Thread Family can focus on their relationships with one another, a team of collaborators provides pro-bono expertise on everything from preventing evictions to accessing adequate healthcare.

Thread has become a nationally recognized non-profit engaging 1088 young people and alumni and more than 3,000 volunteers and collaborators. Historically, ninth-graders with GPAs below 1.0 graduate at a rate of 6% in Baltimore. Thread’s students outperform their peers, with 52% graduating in four years and 74% graduating within six years. This statistically-defying success has been featured in the New York Times, Forbes and The Chronicle of Philanthropy. Most importantly, Thread has codified the Thread Engagement Process for bonding and bridging and created, deployed, and refined tools –– curriculum and mobile app –– to drive repeatable behaviors that result in replicable outcomes.

Results, Conclusions, and Discussions: In 2019, Thread began receiving inquiries from universities, corporations, houses of faith and community-based organizations interested in leveraging Thread’s curriculum and mobile app to support bonding and bridging in their institutions. Since 2020, Thread has partnered with JHU BME to further cultural excellence through an in-depth series of engagements with students, faculty and staff including:
- Providing experiential learning, training, coaching and ongoing support opportunities
- Facilitating retreats, workshops and conferences
- One-time lectures and a semester long course
- Implementation of Thread Model within the department to create a mentorship infrastructure
As academic excellence is traditionally reported by standardized, quantifiable metrics, it is equally important to be able to track progress and metrics on cultural excellence. Thread and JHU worked to define a logic model for BME that synergizes academic and cultural excellence. This tool assigns a cause-and-effect statement between the inputs and how they support the programmatic activities that lead to short, intermediate, and long-term accomplishments of the program. Importantly, applying this logic model through the lens of developing academically and culturally excellent biomedical engineers provides a framework for more rigorous departmental self-assessment and quantification of activities that impact individual growth as well as institutional, community and societal outcomes. Our logic model illustrates an approach to culturally inclusive activities, such as designing healthcare solutions for under-resourced communities, as a critical part of the transformational education experience of BME departments.

Acknowledgements (Optional):