Beta Mu Epsilon fosters professionalism, mentorship, service, and design among Michigan BME students

For biomedical engineering students, the right community can shape everything from study habits to career confidence. At U-M, Beta Mu Epsilon (ΒΜΕ) brings together a growing network of BME students and peers in related majors through mentorship, service and hands-on engineering-focused programming.

“We have approximately 90 to 100 members,” said Garima Sawhney, the organization’s president. “The goal of our organization is to promote brotherhood and friendship, and support each other in our biomedical engineering and biomedical engineering-related endeavors as students.”

Mentorship at the core

Beta Mu Epsilon focuses primarily on undergraduate students, with some members also in the Sequential Undergraduate/Graduate Studies (SUGS) program. Leaders emphasize that supporting students early—especially first-year students and sophomores—is central to the organization’s culture.

“One of the major things is mentorship,” Sawhney said. “Especially when we have freshmen and sophomores coming in, we want to make sure they feel supported.”

Each new member is paired with an older student for professional mentorship, and also matched with a “big” for additional peer guidance and community-building.

Five pillars: professional development, scholarship, biomedical, service, and brotherhood

Programming spans what leaders describe as major pillars of the organization:

• Professional development: Events tied to career preparation, interview readiness, resume building, and graduate school awareness 
• Scholarship: Building study habits, study groups, course planning
• Biomedical: Events tied to research exploration, technical skills, activities with local schools to promote STEM and introduce younger students to biomedical engineering
• Service: Fundraising, volunteering, outreach, and collaborations with other student organizations and professional fraternities
• Brotherhood: Community building, engaging social events

Innovation Day brings engineering to life

A standout event each semester is Innovation Day, a friendly competition designed to build teamwork, problem-solving, and technical communication skills.

“We have four families in the fraternity, and all of them compete at Innovation Day,” said Archit Vig, the organization’s executive vice president. “It’s for bragging rights, but we do many different activities that promote the engineering aspect of our organization—problem-solving, working together to build things, and presenting the outcomes the way you would for an internal or external design review.”

Innovation Day is held once per semester, typically mid-to-late term, to avoid finals crunch.

Founded by BMEs, named for BME

Beta Mu Epsilon was founded at U-M in 2015 by seven biomedical engineering students and has expanded steadily since. The organization’s name also reflects its roots in the discipline.

“If you put ‘Beta,’ ‘Mu,’ and ‘Epsilon’ together, the first three letters of each word spell BME,” Sawhney said.

While the group is not currently part of a national organization, leaders are exploring opportunities to expand Beta Mu Epsilon to other universities by building connections with BME students and alumni networks beyond Michigan.

Support that carries into careers and research

Both leaders described Beta Mu Epsilon as an all-in-one support system—academic, social and professional.

“I joined my first semester freshman year,” Sawhney said. “It was really nice at the beginning of freshman year to find a community and have people who I knew in my classes and with whom I could study.”

She also highlighted practical career preparation—resume and LinkedIn feedback, mock interviews, interview workshops and career fair prep—supported by designated leadership focused on professional programming.

“My professional mentor was super helpful in helping me polish my resume,” Sawhney said. “Going into the career fair, I was able to practice my pitch with juniors and seniors in the club and receive feedback.”

Vig emphasized the value of a community that spans multiple goals at once. “Having Beta Mu in my corner was very helpful because it encompassed all the different aspects of what I wanted to achieve in college—professionally and in service,” he said. “My research experiences have benefited through resume workshops and talking with people who are currently in research—doing that networking. It’s a community I cherish, because it’s helped me out, and I’m now giving back to it as well.”

---

Get involved

Interested in joining Beta Mu Epsilon? The organization hosts a rush process at the beginning of each semester, typically including:

• Mass meeting to learn about the organization
• Meet-and-greet to connect informally with members
• Application submission
• Speed dating to get to know prospective members
• Group interviews focused on collaboration and problem-solving
• Solo interviews with more individual, behavioral questions

To find rush dates and upcoming events, watch for announcements at the start of each term through BME student channels and Beta Mu Epsilon communications. Follow their instagram page @betamuepsilon for updates on the rush schedule! You can also find them at Northfest and Festifall at the beginning of the semester to join the mailing list and learn more from members.