Mission and Objectives

The mission of our department encompasses that of the Vanderbilt School of Engineering, which is to provide a high quality engineering education in selected areas of engineering, balanced with broad learning opportunities from other fields, and integrated to provide intellectual richness and flexibility. Expanding upon this, it is the mission of the Vanderbilt Department of Biomedical Engineering to

• Enlighten our students with the engineering, mathematics and basic sciences that advance health care and biotechnology;

• Develop the reasoning faculties of our students, enlarge their minds and instill in them precepts of accuracy, ethics and enterprise; and

• Form the engineers, physicians, scientists and industrialists upon whose leadership continued progress in scientific understanding, health and industry depend.

The objectives of the Vanderbilt undergraduate program in biomedical engineering are the following:

(1) To provide an educational program focused at the interface of engineering and biology that enables graduates to solve technological problems and contribute to human health through the practice of biomedical engineering or related fields.

(2) To provide an educational program with breadth sufficient to instill in graduates knowledge of their professional and ethical responsibilities, knowledge in liberal arts, and skills in effective communication that they will carry into their post-baccalaureate endeavors.

(3) To prepare students for programs of advanced study in engineering, the sciences or medicine, or placement in the health-care, biomedical device, and biotechnology industries or as practitioners in related fields.