Professor Arthur T. Johnson
J. Ecosyst. Ecograph. S1 (open access)
http://dx.doi.org/10.4172/2157-7625.S1-002
Arthur T. Johnson
ABSTRACT
Engineers dealing with biological systems need to know how these systems interact with their physical, chemical, and biological environments when they propose solutions to problems involving living things. This awareness should start with their undergraduate education that includes an introduction to biological science. Such a course, developed and taught at the University of Maryland, is described in this paper.
J. Biol. Engr. 7:6 (open access)
http://www.jbioleng.org/content/pdf/1754-1611-7-6.pdf
Arthur T. Johnson
ABSTRACT
Among the important principles in biology that should be taught in biological engineering educational programs is the principle of optimization, what it means, why it is important, and how it comes about. This material can be presented at numerous levels throughout the curriculum. Understanding of this principle can lead biological engineers to expect it in many, if not all, biological system applications. Understanding optimization in biological systems can help understand the predictive power of evolutionary principles and what to expect from living things incorporated in designs.
J. Ecosys. Ecograph. 2011 Special Issue 1.
http://dx.doi.org/10.4172/2157-7625.S1-002
Arthur T. Johnson
Abstract
Engineers dealing with biological systems need to know how these systems interact with their physical, chemical, and biological environments when they propose solutions to problems involving living things. This awareness should start with their undergraduate education that includes an introduction to biological science. Such a course, developed and taught at the University of Maryland, is described in this paper.
Biological Engineering 2010, 3(1): 3-15
Arthur T. Johnson
ABSTRACT
Biological engineering courses and curricula can result in graduates who vary greatly in their abilities to deal with biological systems. While there has been general agreement that biological engineers must have a thorough understanding of biology and biological applications, specific recommendations of competencies have not heretofore been formulated. A minimal list of principles and basic concepts expected of all biological engineering graduates would help to standardize the curricula no matter what educational institution a graduate attended. This article supplies a list of 25 of these essential concepts.
Keywords: biological engineering education, biological engineering principles, biology, competencies.
Arthur T. Johnson
ABSTRACT
Physiology taught to bioengineers can be done differently from physiology taught to others. Bioengineers use mathematical models in their work for other topics, so teaching bioengineers about physiology using mathematical models as an instrument of instruction can be effective. The physiology taught in this course revolves around exercise responses, but not aspects of disease. From a human health maintenance perspective, physiology responses to natural stresses can be very interesting and instructive.
Arthur T. Johnson
ABSTRACT
Group work is integrated throughout all levels of the Biological Resources Engineering program at the University of Maryland. The following is a description of some of the successful policies and procedures, inspired by the lawless gun-toting history of the Al Capone era.
Biotechnol Prog. 2006 Jan-Feb; 22(1):167-72
A.T. Johnson
H. Montas
A. Shirmohammadi
F.W. Wheaton
ABSTRACT
Success of a Biological Engineering undergraduate educational program can be measured in a number of ways, but however it is measured, a presently successful program can translate into an unsuccessful program if it cannot adjust to different conditions posed by technical advances, student characteristics, and academic pressures. Described in this paper is a Biological Engineering curriculum that has changed significantly since its transformation from Agricultural Engineering in 1993. As a result, student numbers have continued to climb, specific objectives have emerged, and unique courses have been developed. The Biological Resources Engineering program has evolved into a program that emphasizes breadth, fundamentals, communications skills, diversity, and practical engineering judgment.
Int. Journal of Engineering Education, 2005, 22:3-8
Arthur T. Johnson
ABSTRACT
The transformation of agricultural engineering into biological engineering is a larger change than meets the eye. First of all, agricultural engineering is an applications discipline, and biological engineering is a science-based discipline. Thus, the emphasis of the education must change from its specific uses to a more general utilization of biological systems. Second, any discipline must have a core set of technical materials and methods. In agricultural engineering, these were largely supplied by the Ferguson Foundation series of textbooks that were used very widely. A new agreement must be reached about how to supply these for biological engineering. Third, biological engineering is not likely to evolve only from agricultural engineering, chemical engineering, and to some extent biomedical engineering, also has designs on the discipline. Fourth, although the goal of biological engineering has been fairly clear since the early 1970's, the steps to reach the goal are not obvious to those who are trying to form the new discipline. The prospects for the new discipline of biological engineering are great, but much work remains to be done.
Keywords: biological engineering, agricultural engineering, new discipline
Eur. J. Eng. Ed., 2003, Vol.28, No. 1, 37-46
Arthur T. Johnson
Paul D. Schreuders
ABSTRACT
Biological engineering will be important for the future application of advances in biology to solve problems facing humankind. The philosophical foundation for broad undergraduate biological engineering programmes has previously been given, but biological engineering graduate programmes, where specialization normally occurs, have remained undefined. While specialization will continue in these graduate programmes, efforts must be made to relate research and teaching results to: (1) the analogical systems approach; and (2) the derivation of biological information to produce new general engineering techniques. Finally, a set of graduate-level core courses is suggested.
Proceedings of 2002 Amer. Soc. for Eng. Educ. Annual Conference & Exposition
Paul D. Schreuders
Arthur Johnson
ABSTRACT
Several years ago, the Biological Resources Engineering Department reexamined and updated the format of its Capstone Design Project. The revised Capstone Design experience was intended to give students an opportunity to manage a product while observing resource constraints. Unfortunately, very few course plans survive intact after contact with the students. This case study will examine the intended processes, the successes, and the failures of the revision. In the plan, the project engineers (students) received funding from the Board of Directors (faculty) to produce a final product at the end of the second semester. The amount of funding was to be determined on the basis of a budget for labor and purchases plus the intended value of the final product. Designs teams were allowed to manage their funding as they saw fit. Designs teams selected a faculty mentor for their project. Projects that were not selected from a list of suggestions were checked by their mentor to assure that the end-product could achieve an "A." The function of the mentor was to assure that all schedules and course requirements were met. However, any other faculty member could be called upon to supply necessary technical assistance. The Board of Directors (BOD) was composed of a minimum of three faculty members, including all faculty mentors. The purpose of the BOD was to ensure even quality and quantity of effort and product value for all teams. The BOD also ensured that the capstone experience included all relevant material learned in prior courses. Students were required to submit work distribution sheets with every major deliverable. This information, BOD input, and project quality was used to assign grades for the individual members of each project group.
Proceedings of ASEE Paper #2973-164
Arthur T. Johnson
ABSTRACT
Engineering principles taught well to students become the foundation for lifelong understanding of physical processes. No set of engineering principles is more useful or pervasive than the concepts of effort variables and flow variables. By analogy, these can be applied to almost any situation involving transfer of something from one location or situation to another.
Effort variables cause action to occur. They can express the tendency for literal or figurative movement, and are sometimes thought to be potential, or field variables. Flow variables are the things that move because of the presence of an effort variable.
Transport processes such as fluid flow, heat transfer, and mass transfer conform very well to the effort and flow variable concept. Temperature and heat are the effort and flow variables for heat transfer, whereas pressure and fluid flow are the effort and flow variables for flow systems.
Students seem to realize that flow can only occur between points where the effort variable is higher at one and lower at another. They have had sufficient experience with electricity, heat, and fluids to know that electric current must flow from higher voltage to lower, that heat must flow from higher temperature to lower, and that water must flow downhill. If it is explained to them that higher to lower potentials needed for flow to occur actually expresses the second law of thermodynamics in another, more general, way, then a very abstruse concept can be made more real.
The analogy can be extended to other physical systems including mechanics (force, velocity) electricity (voltage, electric current), magnetics (magnetomotive force, magnetic flux), and others not normally taught to undergraduate engineering students as transport processes.
The effort and flow variable analog can extend much farther into such disparate areas as the spread of disease, traffic flow, technology transfer, psychological motivation and attainment, politics, economics, and even responses to perfume. All of these have some cause and an accompanying flow.
What limits the rate of flow in the presence of a certain amount of effort? The answer is resistance, defined as effort divided by flow. Thus, one way to contain the spread of disease is to erect barriers (resistance) to its movement, perhaps through vaccination of the susceptible population.
What happens to the flow once it reaches its destination? It can be stored on capacity, defined as the integral of flow divided by effort. Thus, when money crosses the borders of a country, it accumulates and adds to the wealth of a nation.
How fast can changes take place? This is limited by inertia, defined as effort divided by the time derivative of flow. Thus, despite being highly motivated to begin taking courses (high effort), and with sufficient cash in hand to pay for them (low resistance), a student may still take an extra semester to begin that education because of the need to change habits (inertia).
Relationships between resistance, capacity, and inertia lead to time constants and natural frequencies that can show how flow variations can be dampened or magnified. Thus, the more wealth a nation accumulates, the longer is its economic time constant, and the less sensitive it is to external fluctuations in commodity prices.
Proceedings of ASEE Paper #2470-3- 2001
Dr. Arthur T. Johnson
Ms. Rosemary Parker
ABSTRACT
The University of Maryland campus community is proud of its diverse student body. It is a campus where diversity is celebrated and nurtured, even defended before the U. S. Supreme Court. The University has invested heavily in building and maintaining a student body consisting of 12% African Americans, 13% Asian Americans, 5% Hispanic, and 4% of international origin.
The mission of the University of Maryland Diversity Initiative is to build a more inclusive community grounded in respect of differences based on age, race, ethnicity, gender, religion, disability, sexual orientation, class, marital status, political affiliation, and national origin. The presumption, then, is that if minority student enrollment increases, so does cultural diversity. However, there may be other factors that dilute the value to the campus of diversity based mostly on race affiliation.
Admissions standards at the University of Maryland have markedly increased in recent years (for example, in 1992 the average SAT score of the incoming freshmen was 1068 with a high school GPA of 3.19; corresponding statistics in 2000 are 1253 and 3.74). Imposition of these standards has resulted in cultural, as well as academic, selection. There is a much smaller difference among racially diverse students because we are now selecting from among applicants with similar backgrounds.
One of the factors that seems to be having a profound effect on the diversity of our student body is technology. Seventy-three percent of white pre-college students and 32% of African American students have computers at home. These same students are likely to have other technology (cell phones and pagers), strongly supportive parents, more than adequate family income, stable home life, and encouragement for extra curricular activities. Culturally, these students are relatively homogenous, and the technology found in their homes are standardizing the thought processes of these human beings. As we have become a more selective institution, we have sought out those students who are more technology privileged but perhaps less imaginative and creative. As we strive to select the top ten student, it is important to consider many factors so that we may have a campus that is culturally and creatively diverse as well as diverse racially and ethnically.
The most imaginative and creative minds may not always have the highest standardized test scores or have access to the latest in technology. For example, through the individual admissions program, the University is able to bring in truly different students. Many of these admissions have talents, such as athletic or artistic performance, that normally would not qualify them to come to the University of Maryland. However, these students are not likely to fit the same experiential and cultural mold as those who qualify for regular academic admission. This is diversity for real; diversity that broadens the collective experience of faculty and students at the University.
We certainly do not want to lower admissions standards and recent achievements of the University of Maryland, but we do want to enhance student experiences through opportunities given to students who represent real differences in creativity, imagination, and originality.
In an article on admissions decisions, Arthur Coleman, Deputy Assistant Secretary, U.S. Dept. of Education, challenged us to think of Admissions this way: "You are a conductor of an orchestra. You may hire five additional musicians before your fall tour. Of the twenty candidates who have applied, the five most musically-credentialed candidates are all violinists. Do you hire only violinists when you have broader musical needs?" Clearly it is not enough to hire five violinists of different racial and ethnic backgrounds. Likewise on our campus we need students from different racial and ethnic backgrounds who bring different creative and intellectual talents to the campus community.
International Journal of Engineering Education, Vol. 15, No. 4, pp. 249-255, 1999
Arthur T. Johnson
Paul D. Schreuders
ABSTRACT
Teaching transport process to students in medical and biological engineering is very important for their understanding of many of the fluid flow, heat transfer, and mass transfer processes related to biological systems. The classical approach to transport process presentation is compared to an analogical systems approach that is more conceptual and less mathematical. Advantages of the latter approach are that students can more quickly grasp the meanings of processes, and that a broader range of applications can be accommodated.
International Journal of Engineering Education, Vol. 15, No. 4, pp. 243-248, 1999
P. D. Schreuders
A. Johnson
ABSTRACT
Biomedical and biological engineers differ from other engineers in that they must consider not just the abiotic components of a system but the biotic components as well. While this difference may appear to be obvious, it is the implications of this relationship that define the fields. These engineered systems exhibit a number of defining traits including the necessity for homeostasis on the pat of a living system, the interactions between the biological component and the engineered system, and the responses of the organisms to each other. At the University of Maryland we teach a course entitled Biological Responses to Environmental Stimuli' to develop an understanding on the part of the students of these relationships and their implications to biological engineers.
Proceedings of ASEE Paper #1608-2, 1999, American Society for Engineering Education
Paul D. Schreuders
Arthur Johnson
ABSTRACT
Final examinations are a stressful time for everyone involved. In an effort to reduce the stress level (and have a little fun), over the last several years some of the faculty in the Biological Resources Engineering Department at the University of Maryland have given final examinations in the "Great Literature" format. The Great Literature series of final exams is based upon recognizable literary masterpieces. The styles and general contents of these examinations mimic those of the literature they represent. The courses in which this examination format has been used include a graduate course in Instrumentation Systems and undergraduate courses in Biological Systems Controls and in Biological Responses to Environmental Stimuli. Included in this paper are examples of examinations given these classes.
Proceedings of ASEE Paper #1608-3, 1998, American Society for Engineering Education
Paul D. Schreuders
Arthur T. Johnson
ABSTRACT
While a major goal of an engineering education is the preparation of students for solving "real world" problems, actually assigning these problems is rarely possible in a teaching environment. A number of different strategies exist for structuring student projects, so that they prepare the students for the work environment. We will compare the benefits and the costs of two of these strategies for structuring student projects. Both methods are currently employed in the Biological Resources Engineering Department at the University of Maryland. Furthermore, both strategies, described below, have their strengths and weaknesses.
In the first, more common, structure, students are assigned group projects that last the entire semester. The time available allows the assignment of complex and relatively unbounded projects, and the students can be exposed to the entire process of project development. However, because of the duration of the project, only a single iteration of this process is possible. Furthermore, in practice, the majority of the project tends to be performed in a short period of time, just prior to the due date.
An alternate strategy is to assign a number of short projects throughout the semester. In this approach, three high intensity, short duration projects are assigned. The students must build expertise in an area in a matter of only a few days, requiring them to develop both research and time management skills. In addition, because multiple projects are assigned, projects may be assigned in different disciplines and the students have several opportunities to correct their mistakes and polish their report writing skills. However, because of their short duration the projects must be somewhat limited in scope. Furthermore, because of the short duration of the projects, the students become completely immersed in their projects, to the exclusion of their other classwork.
Proceedings ASEE Paper 2251-5, 1996, American Society for Engineering Education
Arthur T. Johnson
ABSTRACT
The Biological Process Engineering course at the University of Maryland must offer something of interest to all students who take it. Among these students are those interested in environmental engineering. The course teaches transport processes with applications to all areas of biology, from medicine to ecology. In this paper are given example design problems in environmental engineering. These include: Traffic Across a Salt Marsh, Toxic Material Removal, Toxic Materials Cleanup, Waste Handling, and Waste Composting.
Careers and the Engineer, Spring 1990, pp. 30-34
Arthur T. Johnson
Gerald E. Rehkugler
ABSTRACT
Career opportunities in biological engineering range from agricultural to biomedical. In this paper are described technical areas for employment and estimates of numbers of jobs.
Journal of Engineering Education, October 1995, Vol. 84, No. 4
Arthur T. Johnson
Winfred M. Phillips
ABSTRACT
Biological engineers apply engineering methods to biological systems. There is a current interest in revising or establishing new biological engineering curriculums and courses. This paper gives a philosophy from which biological engineering curriculums can emerge. Biological engineering should have the conceptual framework of a broad, fundamental, and integrative discipline. Biological engineers should be capable of synthesizing their creations from many disparate sources and of communicating with practitioners from many distinct disciplines. Hierarchical competencies are given to distinguish all college graduates, all engineering graduates, and all biological engineering graduates. Basic engineering concepts and basic biology concepts are sometimes conflicting, but must nevertheless be incorporated in undergraduate courses. Specific required courses will vary from university to university, but all biological engineering curriculums must include courses on engineering topics, life sciences topics, and courses that integrate the two. Issues of interfaces between biological engineers and biologists, and with potential employers are also considered. This paper was intended to guide the establishment of new or revised biological engineering programs.
BIOLOGICAL ENGINEERING: A DISCIPLINE WHOSE TIME HAS COME
Engineering Education, January/February 1990
Arthur T. Johnson
Denny C. Davis
ABSTRACT
The biological revolution is making possible a new realm of products, procedures, and services. The most visible and celebrated of these are genetically manipulated organisms, but others such as new drugs, biomaterials, computer-based prostheses, animal growth hormones, optimum plant growth environments, and manufactured foods will contribute significantly to a future dramatically different from today. To bring these and other changes about will require engineers with training based squarely on the discipline of biology. The time has come to acknowledge the birth of a new, integrative discipline: biological engineering. We will attempt to define the nature of this new field and discuss why it is needed.