As teachers at an institution committed to "global engagement," how can U-M instructors best facilitate students' international experiences and connections? And how can we enable students to make meaningful differences in the world? Assistant Professor of Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering Kathleen Sienko has been a campus leader on these questions, developing programs that take students around the world as well as programs that enable students here in Ann Arbor to make and mobilize global connections utilizing the resources of the internet.
Design for Global Health. Sienko was honored with the 2012 Teaching Innovation Prize for this capstone program she developed for undergraduate engineering students. Under Sienko's guidance, in collaboration with Dr. Aileen Huang-Saag and building on several long-standing U-M connections in Africa, students in the program have worked with clinicians in resource-limited settings--initially in Ghana, then in other African countries and China--to design medical devices to address needs in specific areas of global health (e.g., maternal health, infant mortality, or HIV/AIDS). Student designs have included an assisted obstetric delivery device, a multi-functional labor and delivery bed, and an adult male circumcision tool. Through a combination of field work, course work, cross-cultural training, and hands-on design experience, students in the program learn to define problems, adjust their solutions to accommodate real-world limitations, and collaborate in culturally-sensitive ways.
Statements by student participants reflect the program's emphasis on using action-based learning Read more »
Submitted by tbraun on Wed, 10/03/2012 - 11:21am
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gained insight into faculty worklife and learned about what it takes to get an academic job at different types of institutions--and to be successful once there. Presenters included faculty and administrators from liberal arts colleges, community colleges, smaller regional universities, and major research institutions, including U-M. 
The PSC was developed and is primarily taught by CRLT Assistant Director, Chad Hershock. In order to flexibly accommodate the demanding research obligations of U-M’s postdocs, he developed the course using a “flipped class” model. Before each of the seven sessions, participants watch short video podcasts and complete preparatory, online assignments to establish basic mastery of teaching and learning concepts. During face-to-face meetings the postdocs engage exclusively in hands-on, experiential learning, practice applying the concepts, and participate in reflective discussions. Both online and during class, the instructors model research-based teaching strategies, so that participants may experience these approaches from the perspectives of their future students. Short-course topics include:
