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Biomedical Engineering Education

Biomedical Engineering Education - Poster Session D

Poster R1 - Design-Thinking Inspired Career Development: A model for career evolution in biomedical engineering

Friday, October 25, 2024

3:30 PM - 4:30 PM EST

Location: Exhibit Hall E, F & G

Presenting Author(s)

Pamela Bhatti, PhD (she/her/hers)

Professor and Associate Chair
Georgia Institute of Technology
Atlanta, Georgia, United States

Co-Author(s)

Jacqueline Rohde, PhD (she/her/hers)

Academic Professional
Georgia Institute of Technology, Georgia, United States

Introduction: According to the US Bureau of Labor and Statistics, biomedical engineers can anticipate a 5% growth rate in employment of jobs. Moreover, while this is only slightly above the average for all occupations, biomedical engineers can take on various incredibly impactful roles and job duties critical to medicine and human health. Importantly, these roles can vary significantly throughout one’s career journey. Such a career path can often require a deep and thoughtful understanding of career goals and satisfaction throughout the journey. To prepare engineering students for lifelong career development and extend beyond conventional college career center offerings, a design-thinking-inspired career exploration module was delivered as a one-week module in a graduate innovation and entrepreneurship course. The term ‘design thinking’ is rooted in human-centered design and is often related to developing a product or service. However, design thinking also evokes a sense of creativity and intentionality that goes beyond industrial or commercial settings. By leveraging the Designing Your Life (DYL) framework developed by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans at the Stanford Design School, we created a set of in-class and pre-work activities to engage students in career reflection exercises and prompt them to think about their career values and goals. We have witnessed how design thinking can help students grow their self-awareness, explore their career options, and feel more confident about their futures.

Materials and

Methods: Individual pre work is assigned one week in advance. The work includes a 350-word Workview writing exercise and a values inventory sheet. Adapted from the DYL framework, the writing exercise asks students to respond to prompts such as: Why do you work? What brings you energy when you work? Students are encouraged to move beyond their current career plan, e.g., a master’s degree, and to consider the integration of work and life. To preserve the confidential nature of one’s career aspirations and to promote authentic exploration, the students were not required to turn in the assignment but acknowledge its completion. Students were also instructed to select 10 values from 25 options on a Values Inventory worksheet. Then, students identified a smaller list of 3-5 core values. Example values include influence, pace, leadership, mission, and travel to name a few.

In the studio, students review their Workview and Values Inventory. Building further upon these insights, students move to an ideate phase and individually complete a Career Odyssey worksheet through a guided process adapted from DYL. The Career Odyssey is structured with three career categories: 1) a career they currently envision, 2) a career if the present career was no longer an option, or 3) a wildcard/encore career. Given the time constraints in the 90-minute studio, students work through a single Career Odyssey that is scoped to a 3-5-year time horizon. Within this timeframe, students are asked to develop their milestones, consider their current resources, and gauge their enthusiasm for their pathway.

Results, Conclusions, and Discussions: Embedded within a semester course addressing innovation and entrepreneurship, over 400 students have engaged in the career reflection exercise at campuses across the globe (USA, Europe, China). The diverse student body means that students bring many expectations about what it means to innovate, communicate, and to plan out one’s future. They are very vocal in sharing their thoughts and experiences, such as deciding to pursue graduate studies or pivot into new specializations. When asked about the question, “State three new learnings and/or validations of your beliefs related to your career plans from the exercise this week,” students found the exercise helpful and productive. Learnings included the importance of long-term career planning and the ability to use the exercises again in 3-5 years. Many students also comment upon failure and opportunity. A student thoughtfully reported, “In my career, I should not shy away from opportunities because of fear of failure. Instead, I should see failure as an opportunity to learn and grow.” Additionally, planning for another career category, e.g., encore career, maintains their involvement in the studio while not disturbing their current career pathway.

Engineering talent is in high demand, but such industries demonstrate cyclical behavior with high growth opportunities counteracted by times of workforce reduction. Additionally, students are presented with a wealth of opportunities in the form of the range of roles an individual can take and the variation in compensation levels. Students are also exposed to a barrage of information about ideal timings for an engineer to switch jobs to remain productive, relevant, and compensated equitably. It is essential to address the various ways that careers may be developed and examined. While design thinking is pervasive and has gained significant traction, it is a heuristic approach that provides quick avenues of inquiry that lead to a solution. However, by developing self-directed and accessible career reflection skills and tools, our hope is to enable our students to not only apply their technical skills and competencies but also can demonstrate agility and embrace change to pursue the career(s) they desire.

Acknowledgements (Optional): Dr. Laura Schram, Director of Professional Development & Engagement in the Rackham Graduate School at the University of Michigan, and Dr. Srini Tridandapani, PhD-MD, University of Alabama, Department of Radiology, were both instrumental in helping us refine exercises from the DYL book leading to a set of pre-work and in-class activities suited for a 90-minute studio offering to students coming from various disciplines and postgraduate career stages.