Engineering Wellness: A Comprehensive Approach to Education in U-M BME
The course integrates wellness and well-being education with BME design.
3–4 minutes
ENGR100 Section 520, Engineering Wellness, provides an innovative angle on engineering education by integrating biomedical engineering with wellness strategies. Set to be offered again this coming fall after its inaugural run in Fall 2023, the course provides students with tools and strategies to change the narrative from “surviving” engineering education to “thriving” in it.
Studies of engineering students reveal engineering education to be a high-stress environment that hinders retention, persistence, and learning. The overall goal of this project is to offer a course and related curricular resources designed for adaptation at other institutions and even across STEM disciplines.
“This class is truly unique in our BME community because it fuses technology and wellness,” said Karin Jensen, Assistant Professor, Biomedical Engineering. “Students are not just learning how sensors in devices like an Apple Watch work; they’re also understanding how these technologies measure vital health metrics such as heart rate and sleep quality, and how to then implement these wellness strategies into their own lives.”
The course covers a broad spectrum of learning objectives, including a hands-on lab component where students build sensors using Arduinos and perform molecular lab assays, such as measuring cortisol—a stress hormone in saliva—through an Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA) test. An ELISA is a laboratory technique used to detect and quantify antigens, antibodies, proteins, and other biomolecules in a sample.
Dr. Jensen describes how the course integrates wellness and well-being education with BME design. “The idea is to integrate content on physiology and sensor technology, while also conveying practical wellness strategies that students can implement in their own lives,” she said. “For example, how can students improve their sleep hygiene? Through the course activities, students discover ways they can make specific changes in their schedules to try to achieve better wellness.”
In addition to technical knowledge, students also learn how to make products more inclusive and accessible for all. “We’ve partnered with the Center for Socially Engaged Design to develop case studies,” Dr. Jensen said. “For instance, students evaluate pulse oximeters that can inaccurately measure readings in people with darker skin tones, leading to healthcare inequities. This real-world problem-solving aspect is key to helping students shape more inclusive designs.”
A highlight of the course is the design project where multidisciplinary teams work to redesign an existing commercially available product. “Each team has a different product—anything from Garmin watches to wearable UV sensors,” Dr. Jensen said. “They benchmark, user-test, and prototype these devices before developing a redesign aimed at making them more accessible and, ultimately, more effective.”
In terms of departmental uniqueness, U-M’s BME program stands out for its robust infrastructure supporting engineering education research, something of which Dr. Jensen is particularly proud. “There are very few places where you can pursue a BME Ph.D. and engage in engineering education scholarship like we have at Michigan,” she said.
On the horizon, the course is set to benefit further from recent National Science Foundation (NSF) funding aimed at scaling and studying its impact, an investment that signifies its potential to revolutionize how wellness is taught within engineering programs.
In recognition of the positive impact this course has had, the teaching team for BME ENGR100 Section 520–Dr. Jensen, BME grad student GSI Eileen Johnson, and Robin Fowler and Fatima Albrehi from Tech Comm–received the Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education (ADUE) Team Teaching Award in May 2025 for developing this course.
Dr. Jensen and the teaching team are working to make engineering education a transformative experience for students and faculty that has the potential to affect the global community. As Dr. Jensen noted, “It’s a fun course to teach. We have so many great students, and their interests span beyond BME, into a variety of majors, which makes for dynamic, multidisciplinary teams. It’s exciting and rewarding to see the impact this integrated approach to education is having on our community.”