High-School Outreach

To boost scientific literacy and generate interest in science, engineering, health, and technology, Rice 360° and the Beyond Traditional Borders initiative have adapted the Bioengineering and World Health curriculum for high school students.   Created for use at the university level by professors and clinicians from Rice University and the Texas Medical Center, the course covers significant health issues facing developed and developing countries. Topics include leading causes of child and adult mortality; comparative health systems; in-country healthcare constraints; epidemiology and pathophysiology of leading mortality diseases; and limitations of current diagnostic and therapeutic approaches for those diseases in settings with varying levels of resources. Student teams also research a health topic of interest, design new technology prototypes for use in a resource-constrained setting, and outline clinical trials to test the technology.

The curriculum is disseminated through an annual Professional Development Workshop for teachers, which is accompanied by a high school design competition. Since 2006, teachers from Texas, Colorado, Mexico, Malawi, and Lesotho have participated in the workshop. 

The Bioengineering and World Health curriculum has been approved for science credit by the Texas Education Agency under the Scientific Research and Design PEIMS #12112120 or for 36 hours career and technical education credit under the World Health Research PEIMS #13020900.  Bioengineering and World Health must include at least 40% lab investigation and/or fieldwork using scientific inquiry to  be considered a science course. 

 


Professional Development Workshop
In spring 2014, Beyond Traditional Borders at Rice University will again offer a unique opportunity to prepare middle and high school teachers to implement Bioengineering and World Health. In an online workshop consisting of 12 sessions, teachers will experience how bioengineering improves health today and where the future of bioengineering lies.  Teachers participate in hands-on activities to prepare to teach the course.  The workshop includes:

Guest lecture series and activities via webinar. Teachers meet online Thursdays from 7:00 - 8:30 pm.   Presentations are followed by an in-class activity and lesson plan discussion. In lieu of one Thursday session, teacher participants meet on a Friday on the Rice University campus for a presentation and tours of the Rice Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen, Bioengineering research laboratories and Texas Medical Center Facilities. A luncheon with a special guest speaker follows.

 Learning & developing course-specific teaching materials. Teachers participate in hands-on exercises to learn strategies to effectively teach Bioengineering and World Health.

Carrying-out an independent project. Teachers learn how to instruct students to complete an independent project in which they design a new health technology prototype to diagnose or treat a disease in the developing world. 

For more information about the spring 2014 annual professional development workshop, please email beyondtraditionalborders@rice.edu.

High School Design Competition

High school students sponsored by any Science, Technology, Engineering or Math teacher can participate in a Global Health Technologies Design Competition.  Student teams use the engineering design process to develop a solution to a real-world global health design challenge under the mentorship of Rice360°'s students, staff, and faculty, gaining hands-on design experience as they design a prototype.

For the 2012-2013 Global Health Design Competition, the Rice 360° team issued two challenges: develop a self-calibrating dosimeter to measure the intensity of phototherapy lights or design a simple method for adjusting CPAP nasal prongs.  Participating students choose to undertake one of these challenges thought the academic year, completing 6 rounds of one page assignment submissions.  At the end of the competition, selected student teams present their prototypes to a panel of judges from Rice 360° and our partners.  The winning teams receive a cash prize.

 Applications for the April 2014 Global Health Technologies design Competition will be made available on September 2013.  For more information, please email beyondtraditionalborders@rice.edu.