Expert: Daniel Mazur - 11/3/2006

Question
i attend northern kentucky university- its a large school and really seems like it should offer more engineering-wise. check out the website to learn more about the neuroscience program - www.nku.edu . what do you think about a duel minor, like adding biology to improve my knowledge of life systems? or maybe something mechanically oriented? i have a rather complicated family situation that keeps me from going away.
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The text above is a follow-up to ...

-----Question-----
hello i am a 20 yrs old sophomore in college. i am currently a physics major/ neuroscience minor, but i really, really want to be a biomedical engineer. i know its the field for me. unfortunately, my school doesn't offer an engineering degree. my hope is to finish school and begin my career in the biomedical area, and possibly return for a masters in biomedical engineering at another school, when i have the means to support myself. is it possible to break into the biomedical field with a physics/neuroscience degree? will i be appealing to employers? or should i consider a different degree? i know where i want to be in 5 years, i just don't know how to get there.
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Hello Kathryn,

where is it that you go to college? It's unlucky you find yourself studying a program other than one you feel to be the best for you, but steps can be taken at any point. Although I know little about either of the two programs (I know about physics, but little about neural system:-)), I daresay you could still transfer to another college, one that offers BME program, and suffer only minor delay in your curricular progress. There are courses among those you've taken in Phy/NeuroSci, I am sure, that the target college will give you credit for and you won't have to repeat them. I mean, freshman physics and biology is roughly the same everywhere. Such transfer might add an extra semester to your college studies, but I feel it is worth it for you.

The second option would be to stay in Neurosci until you reach the Bc level and then move on to get Master in Biomed. That is what I would do, unless I really dislike the current program. I expect you gain a broader knowledge about laws of nature studying a scientific program and that is something you benefit from all you later life. Especially if your scientific basis is neuroscience, which feels like next door to BME to me, is it not? Naturally, if you take this course of actions (i.e. get Bc first and then switch to BME), you will have much larger amount to learn from the Bc. BME curriculum and your Master's degree may take two or three semesters longer than it would otherwise.

The decision you need to make is, what kind of difficulties you are more willing to face. There may be relocation/commuting issues coming with the change of school. There may be private reasons that keep you at the college, where you are now. All this needs to be taken into account. But from your message I feel your determination to deal with the difficulties, because you know what you want.

I hope I helped a bit to sort things and I wish you all success in working towards your goals.

Cheers!
Daniel

Answer
Hi,
As you have a mixed major/minor, I hope I get it right that you are taking all the required courses for both at your level. I chose to compare it with Biomedical engineering at my own school, the Illinois Institute of Technology: http://www.iit.edu/%7Ebiomed/academics_ug/curriculum.html

You'll find we even have the category Neural Engineering in the BME program. It is telling me that if you want to stay at your college until your degree and still do something towards BME graduate program in future, you will need to add a lot of general and human biology to what you are taking now. Also princil=ples of chemistry and later a load of electronics and instrumentation courses. I see that as the NKU's neuroscience is an interdisciplinary minor, you don't get much of the above subjects in your curriculum.

I recommend you pick a decent college around the US, anywhere, which has BME (you can use my school for example) and do a thorough search of what subjects the BME has in its curriculum. And find their detailed descriptions (you can ask the school to send you their course book). Then find the most matching courses at your school (matching by description and amount of credit), which will sort the subjects into the group you can, and should, take along with your current program, and those that will have to wait till you get to a BME program. It seems to me that after you are finished with this search, you'd do best to see your academic advisor, present him/her with what you want to add to your program (and I would approach it as just elective courses, I would not call it a dual minor) and hear their, hopefully encouraging, advice. I guess there are quite a few elective courses in the 3rd and 4th year of Physics, that you could replace with the biology and chemistry. But you need a word of a professor, because the new workload must not prevent you from graduating. Later, when you are about to graduate or when your family situation changes, you can again evaluate, what school you'd like to study your BME at. All the BMEs around the country should have the same core, so it does not matter at the moment, which school you choose to build your alternative curriculum alike.

Good luck,
Daniel