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December 7, 2007 > News > New global health minor to be approved

New global health minor to be approved

By Cindy Dinh | For the Thresher

Rice campus often seems filled with students trying to fix global problems, whether through the Peace Corps, Engineers Without Boarders or the numerous alternative spring breaks. A proposed Global Health Technologies minor seeks to make this sort of activism part of the Rice curriculum. Proposed at the end of last summer, the interdisciplinary minor has been approved by the Undergraduate Curriculum Committee and is awaiting approval by the Faculty Senate.

The proposal passed through the curriculum committee with no nay votes and two abstentions, and the minor be implemented and published in the General Announcements as soon as fall 2008.

“Many students in the bioengineering department were already concentrating in the global health initiative, so now it is finally taking shape as a minor,” Martel College junior Christine Moran, who is on the Undergraduate Curriculum Committee, said. “It is definitely in high demand.”

Rebecca Richards-Kortum, chair of the Bioengineering Department, has spearheaded this proposition. Richards-Kortum received a grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute to fund new classes in the Global Health Technologies minor via the Beyond Traditional Boarders program, which trains students to address and solve global health issues. This four-year grant expires in Sept. 2010, but is eligible for renewal.

Under the minor, students would take six courses along one of two different tracks specified for differing academic interests: one for science and engineering students and another for humanities, social science and policy study students. The two tracks start with the same required course, BIOE 260: Introduction to Global Health Issues. The paths split into differing requirements and electives before joining again with senior year capstone project, BIOE 461/462: Global health Design Challenge. The course would require a group of students from differing backgrounds to collaborate and design a project to apply to a real-world situation, such as develop educational materials, bioengineering devices and tools for pharmacists or patients to use in the developing world.

“[The classes] give the students tools they can use to actually solve problems, and not just learn about them,” Bioengineering Lecturer Maria Oden said.

The other required courses focus on building a strong background in biology while the electives are more diverse in focus, ranging from issues in the developing world to biology courses.

The minor proposal states that all core courses will be offered every year, with the entry point of BIOE 260 open to 25-30 students. It also states that the required courses of BIOS 361: Metablolic Engineering for Global health Environments, BIOS 362: bioengineering for Global Health Environments and BIOS 122: Fundamental Concepts in Biology will be developed and taught by graduate or post-doctoral students. Courses in the minor will be open to students not along the minor path.

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