USC's board of trustees approved several academic initiatives within the College of Engineering and Computing and the College of Information and Communications in its Dec. 19 meeting over the university’s winter break.
The board approved the creation of the Department of Biomedical Engineering and a new industrial engineering degree program within the College of Engineering and Computing. Plans for a Bachelor of Arts in Biomedical Engineering are also in progress. The implementation of a new sports media degree within the College of Information and Communications was also approved.
The academic initiatives are pending final approval by the Commission on Higher Education, with a series of tentative meetings scheduled to make approval decisions.
Department of Biomedical Engineering
The Department of Biomedical Engineering currently operates jointly with the Departments of Chemical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering and the School of Medicine.
“It’s just time for the faculty (and) our biomedical engineers to become its own entity,” Interim Chair of Biomedical Engineering Mark Uline said.
If approved by the Commission, the department will become an autonomous entity, shifting the authority and enabling it to function independently. The department would have authority over hiring, curriculum changes and fundraising.
The new department would encompass both current faculty and new faculty members. A driving factor to establish the department is the diversity that the biomedical faculty candidates would offer by being able to include more women in the field, CEC Dean Haj-Hariri said.
The creation of the new department aims to position the program on “equal footing with the rest of the national landscape for biomedical engineering,” Uline said.
Biomedical Engineering Bachelor of Arts
The Bachelor of Arts in Biomedical Engineering will be housed within the pending Department of Biomedical Engineering.
The program is rooted in the principles of engineering, which emphasizes "qualitative rigor over quantitative rigor," Uline said. The degree will focus on foundational knowledge of engineering with less mathematical and technical rigor compared to other engineering degrees.
The B.A. is designed to accommodate students who may not need the intensive mathematical and traditional engineering coursework typically associated with the field. The creation of the B.A. aims to fill the needs of an “undersupported part of the workforce,” Uline said.
The B.A. could be available as early as 2024, as there is already a Bachelor of Science in biomedical engineering, according to Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Jed Lyons
“Biomedical engineering is a very special field,” Haj-Hariri said. “It’s a wonderful pathway.”
The B.A. is considered a general degree because it offers a broader education, rather than focusing on a specific technical field.
Feedback from students, faculty, alumni and industrial partners will be used to refine and advance the degree programs as they take shape. Lyons said that this will be done by administering end-of-semester course evaluations.
Industrial Engineering Degree
The subject of industrial engineering is "concerned with the design, improvement and installation of integrated systems of people, materials, information, equipment and energy," according to the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineering.
Information on the specific criteria of the degree is tentative as it has not yet been fully established.
The Commission on Higher Education is scheduled to convene in June 2024 to decide on approval of the degree. Once fully approved, the program could be offered by the fall of 2025, Haj-Hariri said.
If established, there would be “an umbrella” of interdisciplinary coursework within the industrial engineering degree, incorporating soft skills and sales engineering courses. The CEC has partnered with the Darla Moore School of Business to establish sales engineering courses.
“I am super excited about the industrial degree because we are an industrial state,” Haj-Hariri said. "South Carolina is a manufacturing state."
The program will take a comprehensive approach through systems engineering that optimizes entire systems, Haj-Hariri said.
“I have confidence that it's going to get approved,” Lyons said. "But it's not in our control anymore."
Sports Media Degree
The purpose of the new degree is to better prepare students for careers in sports media and enhance students’ abilities as sports media consumers. Specifics are to be determined as the major develops. If approved by the Commission, the degree could be available as soon as fall 2024.
The new degree encompasses required skill-specific classes, theoretical content, as well as elective courses, such as SEC football classes and gender and race classes.
“The degree is flexible," Associate Professor and Sports Media Lead Kevin Hull said. "It’s what you want to make of it."
Student demand pushed the creation of the sports media degree, as it originally began as a concentration, Hull said.
Contributing faculty's positions will remain unchanged for the time being.
"I think there is a variety of prep we can do, and a variety of teaching," Hull said. "If this interests them, they are going to have an enjoyable education."