Jacquelynn with her poster at the Undergraduate Research Symposium hosted by the Honors College (April 2024)
Author: Jacquelynn Horsey | Major: Biomedical Engineering | Semester: Spring 2024
A blog post by Jacquelynn Horsey, a graduate of the College of Engineering with a B.S. in biomedical engineering, studying under Dr. Mostafa Elsaadany, also of the biomedical engineering department. Jacquelynn has pursued research with Dr. Elsaadany for 1.5 years and will attend UAMS College of Medicine in the fall of 2024. This was her second and last semester of funding.
During my junior year of college, I knew I needed to get involved with research somehow. This had proven difficult, and frankly did not interest me, prior to this semester. As a COVID freshman, our class was significantly limited in the opportunities we were given and made aware of. As an honors college fellow, I was expected to pursue research. As someone interested in medical school, I knew this could strengthen my application. During the fall of my junior year, I was taking a class titled Biomolecular Engineering. This was a lab heavy course that discussed our field at the molecular level. One of the teaching assistants for this lab was someone I looked up to, and I discussed with her at length my feelings on research, particularly “wet” research. In biomedical engineering, I felt that all my peers who were pursuing research were cutting open rats, creating recombinant DNA, and growing their own bacterial cultures. Not only was this daunting, but it just did not seem like something I wanted to do. My TA talked to me about education-based research and told me I should talk to Dr. Elsaadany. It just so happens that he was looking for an addition to his lab at the time. We discussed his work in engineering education and the type of work that I would be doing. This sounded exactly like what I was interested in, and I agreed to work with him.
My research project was based on the analysis of a biomedical engineering course – Clinical Observations and Needs Finding. This course provides clinical immersion to the students to introduce the medical device creation process, from needs identification to the introduction of solution development. This 1-hour course requires students to participate in clinical and industry shadowing experiences where they identify gaps in our healthcare system. Upon return to the classroom, students work in teams to develop solutions designs, remaining cognizant of the FDA approval process. This course is a pre-requisite to the Senior Design courses, which further the students’ understanding of device development and include prototype creation.
Engineering education is a field that is constantly evolving and requires analysis of its own efficacy to ensure we are providing students with the highest quality of education. To evaluate the Clinical Needs course, we collected survey data prior to and following the course to measure students’ self-reported confidence levels. It was my job to analyze the data collected and develop papers that presented our findings. My first publication came about 8 months after I began working with Dr. Elsaadany, in the form of an American Society for Engineering Education work-in-progress paper. This paper developed into a poster presentation at the 2023 annual conference in Baltimore, MD, which I was fortunate enough to receive a conference travel grant for. During my senior year, I worked on my Honors thesis with the data collected from this research, further expanding my prior work. This was challenging to begin, as I struggled with a little bit of writer’s block. I found that I was most efficient when I wrote a few sentences every day, allowing myself to continue writing if the words were flowing, but not to stress if they were not. I spent a lot of my time organizing data in Excel and creating figures to visually represent shifts in the students’ mindsets. In addition to my thesis, I spent my senior year working on papers to be submitted to ASEE for their 2024 annual conference. During the fall we submitted abstracts for two papers: a full development of the 2023 work-in-progress and a new work-in-progress focused on demographical analysis of the data. During the spring I completed these papers. I will attend the 2024 conference in Portland, OR, and have been chosen to present both papers as podium presentations. This is something I am incredibly nervous for. Despite being a good public speaker, I have never presented on a podium at a conference in front of professionals who are far more qualified than myself. I am confident that with Dr. Elsaadany’s help, I will succeed in these presentations.
Working with Dr. Elsaadany has been a positive experience. He is very intelligent and motivated to help his students however he can. He has been the greatest mentor, in research and in life, and he wrote one of my letters of recommendation for my medical school application. In his lab, I worked with a few underclassmen. We learned from each other and taught each other technical skills. I have thoroughly enjoyed my undergraduate research experience, even if it was a little different than the research my peers completed. Next, I will attend UAMS to pursue my M.D.