<p>hi can a current student/someone with knowledge of these courses elaborate a little more on these two? like how much time is spent on these courses every week, what kind of research you actually do, is it actually something meaningful or is it kinda like the high school chemistry labs (busy work). i heared that the design team is very time consuming, i dont mind that very much but is it worth it in the end? and which one would you recommend?</p>
<p>thanx for any reply.</p>
<p>I just finished my freshmen year as a BME student.</p>
<p>Here is what I know:</p>
<h2>Models For Life</h2>
<p>-One semester
-Pretty much a team creates a model of a biological system. (i think)
-One big project, and a big presentation at the end of the first semester.
-Workload is less than design team (friends who’ve taken both told me so)
-Most students get an A</p>
<h2>BME Design Team(the one I took)</h2>
<p>-Two semesters, but technically you can drop the second semester (only
jerks do)
-First semester is all fun projects (but the data analysis can be time consuming.
*Cardiac Project - basic practice to learn how to use Holter monitor
*FoamCore - design devices out of a material called “foamcore” to pass ping pong balls across a 13’x13’ square without having them touch the ground. Another catch is that you can only have 4 devices (one at each corner) and the member using them can’t move.
*Six Flags - We get the whole park to ourselves to “test” the rollercoasters. I was the test subject this year.
*Write proposal for big spring semester project. Most important.</p>
<p>-Second Semester is more serious and all you do is work on your spring project. The spring project is a sponsered project where you create a device that will benifit the biomedical community. We created a cardiac-cell contraction dectection chamber. Some teams got grants and even patents!</p>
<p>-More time consuming. If your a good member than at least 10hrs a week. Less first semester though.</p>
<p>-Not all students got As first semester. Most get As second semester though.</p>
<p>Good Luck!</p>
<p>o wow that sounds pretty interesting, thanx alot for the quick reply</p>
<p>How does the time committment for Design team work? The schedule says that the course meets weekly, Thursday’s at noon but is the outside work time set by the instructor, or do you find time that other people in your team have free and work together? Also, for future reference, is there a final in the class first semester? I tried emailing Dr. Allen, but havn’t gotten a response so far so I figured I’d ask you.</p>
<p>I took MFL and it was very easy. As Javis said, the workload is significantly lighter and almost everyone gets an A. The end project really isn’t a big deal. My team worked on it one day in the lab for a few hours and then spent the night before making the poster. We winged the presentation and ended up tying for first (placement doesn’t really matter). I probably will take Design Team as a junior or so to be a team leader but you cannot take MFL if you are not a freshmen.</p>
<p>Thursdays at noon is the lecture time (interesting lectures about BME, art, mathematics, science in general). Most of the time spent for Design Team is outside of the lecture. Our team decided on regular weekly meetings to discuss and work on our projects. We met more often when we needed to. There is a final at the end of first semester but its only 5% and is more of a questionairre of how you feel the program benifited you.</p>
<p>Dr.Allen is my advisor. He has a bad habit of not replying emails (though most of the time it’s my fault that I email him too late!). In general he is a good guy. If you have any other questions you should post here, and when I get the time I’ll answer them.</p>
<p>alright so generally people are saying BME design team is more work than models? so i guess my question is if there is any certain advantage of taking design team over models? b/c i already have a pretty bad courseload…and if models is less work than design team i think i want to take models…is design team more of “engineering” based and models more of the “biomedical” based or are they equal in that respect?</p>
<p>You can only take MFL as a freshmen so you can’t go wrong by taking it. I found it interesting and the workload was very light. If you decide you want to take Design Team, you can do that any year.</p>
<p>I think Design Team is slightly more engineering and is concentrated in one particular area of BME, while MFL is more of a broad class.</p>