A Strengths-Based Approach in Undergraduate Biomedical Engineering Curricula Leads to Engineering Identify Awareness and Facilitates Team Integration

This paper explores the impact of sessions with sophomore biomedical engineering students at an R1 university focused on individualized talent discovery and development to create eff ective teams of contributing individuals and future professionals. The rationale was that the identifi cation and exploration of individual strengths early in the curriculum could lead to enhanced self-awareness, self-confi dence, and appreciation for diversity of thoughts and contributions in teams. Methodology applied over a mini-workshop series required students to complete the CliftonStrengths  assessment to: a) enable identifi cation, naming and understanding of their distinct talents, b) promote increased awareness of others’ unique talents, and c) discern the value each participant brings to a team to achieve academic performance. Program outcomes and changes in participants’ perceived confi dence when identifying and applying their strengths in diff erent contexts were evaluated through a mixed methods design that included a Likert-based survey and thematic analysis of qualitative open text responses. Results showed that 76% of students perceive that they felt overall confi dent in their college experience, a signifi cant increase of 19% (p<0.01) compared to how they rated their perceived confi dence before the program. Additionally, 98% of students indicated that they believed that they have natural talents that will make them good engineers, an increase of 11% (p<0.01). Importantly, students gained confi dence in their ability to direct their talents toward accomplishing specifi c engineering goals, an increase of 43% (p<0.01). Overall, our results showed a positive perceived impact of the strengths-based approach as well as its usefulness in building one’s self-awareness, self-confi dence, and appreciation of peers.