Teaching Activities
FACILITATED LEARNING
Since 1987, Needham’s educational activities have included courses in: Surface and Colloid Science; Engineering Materials; Cellular and Biosurface Engineering; Colloids and Surfaces in Environmental Science and Engineering; Biological Materials Science; Soft Wet Materials and Interfaces; Biologically Inspired Materials and Materials Systems; Mapping Engineering onto Biology; Reverse Engineer Problems Nature Solved; Introduction to Engineering: “Problems Engineers Solved” for Undergraduate (Years 1-4) and Graduate (MS, PhD, Medical), and also K-12 (Middle School, I the Duke TIP); “Reverse Engineer Problems Pharmacists Solved” at SDU Denmark, and now at MEMS with Spring 2019 and Fall 2019 courses called “How to Reverse Engineer Anything”
Over the past 20 years, Needham has made a strong commitment to the Pratt undergrad and grad education. With an emphasis in Biological systems, he explored if and to what extent we could “Map Engineering onto Biology”, what that means, and what we would get out of it --vis a vis a more rigorous understanding of nature’s mechanisms, mainly in the human body, but also in the plant and other animal worlds. What started in the Fall of 2003, as an introductory and foundation course for the then newly funded National Science Foundation IGERT[1] program recruiting 11 graduate students, soon caught the attention of 24 BME undergraduates in the Fall of 2004, when the enrollment was then mixed with 13 graduate students. In the Fall of 2005, 52 students enrolled, and in the Spring 2006 they must have each told two friends and 92 students requested and took the class. Since then there has been a steady stream of 44 (Fall 2006), 61 (Spring 2007), and 72 (Fall 2007) student enrollment. Fall 2008 a course dedicated to just our Duke FOCUS program was offered and was taken by 13, first semester, freshman, who reverse engineered the five senses. Subsequent FOCUS courses have now included topics relevant to the NAEs 14 Grand Challenges, and Pratt’s commitment to its new Grand Challenge Scholar’s Program. The first is Mapping Engineering onto Biology for “How did Nature Solve the Process Sensory Inputs Problem?” (Reverse Engineer the Brain), (Fall 2009) and follows on from the 5 senses of 2008. The second is “How did Nature Solve its Transport Molecules in the Body Problem?” offered in Fall 2009 and 2010, (Engineer Better Medicines). Focused on Nature’s designs, the goal here is for students to create new inventions in drug delivery by a formal process of reverse engineering Nature’s own molecule transport systems. His EDU-K pedagogy of learning (Experiment, Discover, Uncover, leading to new Knowledge), and the content framework of design, in a large part also addresses a third grand challenge, “Personalized Learning”. Needham has also piloted the same kind of approaches in the summer of 2008 with Middle Schoolers in 2 sessions of our Duke Talent Identification Program, (Duke TIP).
His most recent offering is entitled "How to Reverse Engineer Anything as an INvention and Innovation Generator" offered as both an undergraduate and graduate course. A “learner-centric” experience that educates students for a lifetime. THe calls it his EDUK-pedagogy of learner-centric “EDUKation”, where, together with students in coaching sessions they Explore, Discover, Uncover principles with experts, leading to their (and his) new Knowledge. As they go around this again and again it's a spiral of ever-increasing knowledge, for the students.
[1] Interdisciplinary Graduate Education and Research Training, “Graduate Training in Biologically Inspired Materials” Co-P.I. with Prof Robert Clark P.I., $2,900,821, 12/15/02-12/14/07