Office Hours: Episode 12

Episode Extras

• Learn More About Dr. Conrad Zapanta

  Conrad Zapanta earned his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering (option in biomedical engineering) at Carnegie Mellon University in 1991 and earned his doctorate in bioengineering at Penn State University in 1997.

  Dr. Zapanta was a visiting professor of engineering at Hope College (Holland, MI) and Austin Community College (Austin, TX). He was a faculty member at Penn State, where his research focused on cardiac assist devices for smaller adults and children. Dr. Zapanta also worked for Sulzer Carbomedics in the research and development of prosthetic heart valves. He has taught laboratory and design classes since joining the CMU engineering faculty in 2006. He served as associate department head for education in the Biomedical Engineering department from 2009-2022, where he supervised all phases of the biomedical engineering curriculum. His research interests are in cardiovascular medical devices and biomedical engineering education.

  Dr. Zapanta has served in leadership roles for the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE), the American Society of Artificial and Internal Organs (ASAIO), on NIH panels, and is a team chair and biomedical engineering program evaluator for ABET. He is a Fellow for the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE). Zapanta received the 2016 ASEE Biomedical Engineering Division’s Theo Pilkington Award, for his significant contributions to biomedical engineering education as evidenced by the development of successful teaching programs, curricula, and publications.

  Dr. Zapanta is currently a teaching professor in the department of Biomedical Engineering and the Associate Dean of Undergraduate Studies in the College of Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University.

• Read the Transcript

  Liz Wayne

  Liz, hi everyone. Welcome to Office Hours with Liz Wayne, a podcast brought to you by the Biomedical Engineering Society. I'm Liz, an assistant professor in bioengineering. I'm going to introduce you to the world of biomedical engineering through my eyes, or my voice. From genes to machines, biomedical engineers can do it all. We'll dive into how discoveries are made, how research becomes medicine, and what it's actually like working in academia today. So, whether you're a student, researcher, educator, or just someone who's curious about science and how the academic world works, you've come to the right place.

  Doctor Z is in the house! Welcome to Office Hours with Liz Wayne, a podcast from the Biomedical Engineering Society. So happy to have you back listening to another session. It's always good when people show up to office hours. You know, sometimes I just eat my lunch in this time period, or I go on Instagram, or try to watch one episode of One Piece, but every now and then someone comes in and you kind of ask good questions, and then they probe you to think about things you hadn't considered before. Today, we're tackling a question that feels more relevant than ever as AI, online learning, and alternative education pathways, i.e. no education, continue to grow, and I kind of have this question that I've heard some people ask me, maybe family members at holidays, when they're like, "Are you still in school?” And they asked me, "Do we actually need universities to learn anymore?” Which I would say yes, but also maybe we should think about this. Joining me today is Dr. Conrad Zapanta, or lovingly known to his students and everyone at Carnegie Mellon, Dr. Z. Dr. Zepanta is a teaching professor of biomedical engineering and now the associate dean for undergraduate studies and biomedical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. Welcome, Dr. Z.

  Conrad Zapanta

  Thanks for having me, and thank you for that very blessed intro.

  Liz

  Blessed? I mean, Dr. Z, like, who doesn't call you that now?

  Conrad

  My mom, but that's okay.

  [Liz Laughs]

  So I should actually, since this will be a podcast, and my parents may introduce me. Listen, my dad is a medical doctor, I won’t say real doctor, because that's triggering, but he was the original Dr. Z in the family.

  Liz

  Okay, OG Dr. Z.

  Conrad

  I kind of grabbed it. My middle brother, who is a medical doctor, is also Dr. Z, and my wife is also a Dr. Z, but not one that helps people.

  Liz

  And I'm curious, because I kind of grew into knowing you as Dr. Z, but how did that tradition actually even start?

  Conrad

  Great question.

  Liz

  Did you have hair then?

  Conrad

  Oh, that hurts.

  Liz

  How does it hurt?

  Conrad

  Really, too bad that there's no video attached to this at all. But for those in podcast land, this is us. This is not scripted, and this is probably, as my wife said: me unscripted could be dangerous, but going back, I think it just became- I got too lazy to write Zapanta on my emails, and the Z just came out, and it was... I consider it to be a term of endearment.

  Liz

  I think so. When you think of biomedical engineering at Carnegie Mellon, you think Dr. Z, he's the person you go to. You help, and you advocate, and so you know, based on that, you've been, and I don't mean this in the sense of you're being old, but I mean that you are like a pioneer, you've been here around for a long time, you have an extensive background in engineering education, curriculum development, and design-based learning, and so maybe we should start by thinking like how you formed your identity, maybe as an educator. What did you study?

  Conrad

  That's a good question. So, let's just maybe talk about how I stumbled into engineering education. So, my undergraduate degree was in mechanical engineering with an additional major in biomedical engineering at Carnegie Mellon. A very long time ago, potentially your student listeners were not born yet. Did my PhD in bioengineering, and so with that, there was always the interest of doing something with artificial hearts and heart valves. So that's how I got into the biomedical engineering space. When I got into grad school, I realized I actually liked the education part, the pedagogy part, so I was kind of leaning into that. Interestingly enough, I never TA-ed in grad school because we didn't have an undergrad department, so I actually joined their- Penn State was where I did my graduate work. At Penn State, there was a teaching center, I can't recall the exact name, but it was basically teaching grad students how to teach, and so I actually made my own syllabus for a class I never taught, and started thinking about it then. So, fast forward a few years, won't go into the gory details, but I decided that I would do a postdoc in engineering education before finishing up my PhD. So, note to the listeners: starting a full-time job while running your PhD is a horrific idea. That being said, if I had not made that career choice, I would not be where I am today. So, that's totally... don't do it. But it was career changing in a good way.

  Liz

  Why was it career changing? Could you not have waited a little bit longer?

  Conrad

  That's a good question. So, not going into details without really... I felt I was done with my PhD. This opportunity came up. My advisor may have had some debates as to whether I was done... [Laughs]

  Liz

  Always, always!

  Conrad

  And so also keep in mind that I was married my first year in grad school, so my wife was finishing her PhD, so that was also some tension as well, too. But anyway, going back then, I think that I was interested in education. I thought all I needed to do was just to analyze data, and how hard could it be to teach, be a visiting professor of engineering at Hope College?

  Liz

  I mean, you're visiting, visiting is always fun.

  Conrad

  Right. And so basically the timeline was very fast. Think I started looking around in June. I applied for this job in July, like second or third. I had the interview two weeks later, got the offer beginning of August, had the proverbial come-to-Jesus meeting with my advisor. It did not go well, but one of, one of the advisors actually did have my back, and so we did have a plan. It worked out. I taught three classes per semester for two semesters, and was writing my dissertation at the same time.

  Liz

  Woah. That's heavy.

  Conrad

  It was a lot, but I would say then it was Hope College. Shout out to Hope College in Holland, Michigan. I will pull up my hand and point at my left knuckle for the Michiganders in the house. But I remember they had a full week of- so you appreciate that being an onboard as a faculty member, Liz. You know, for better or worse, especially at a research-focused university, you might get, what? An hour or two talking about how to teach during teacher training, maybe half a day, if you're lucky. I had a whole week of teacher training at Hope College, and we basically kicked off on a Monday. “Okay, you're giving a 15 minute lecture, we're going to record this,” and you're going to tear it apart, play by play, second by second, frame by frame, the most horrific experience of my life, but also gave me a chance to really understand what I did, how I said it, the way I said it. So, not just the content, but also the delivery was very important to help me realize that. So, in the end, you know, the best thing about it, you got to redo at the end, it did not suck as much anymore, and then did that career. So basically, ended up doing a year of that. Spoiler alert, did finish my PhD somewhere in there as well. I did shift to industry for a while, though. After that, just because it was a one year visiting position, I was hoping it'd be a tenure track position. They said, "No, we'll give you a three year position.” I wanted more commitment, end up going to industry, and then eventually it trailed back into academia later on. I think it was back to my education part. It was important for me to experience industry, because I think in the end it didn't make me a much better educator.

  Liz

  Ooh, you have to say how.

  Conrad

  And I think it's because where do most of our students go?

  Liz

  They go to industry.

  Conrad

  They go to industry, yeah, and I think a lot of our colleagues in academia never made it out of academia. Maybe they did their undergrad, did their masters, did their PhD, did a postdoc, and started their faculty position. They may have been an internship at some point in time in industry, but I think we can better serve our students being in spaces where they will end up, and industry is one of those spaces.

  Liz

  Full heartedly agree, and even though I have not been to industry, I do for that reason implant industry people into my classes, and I use my friends as opportunities to learn about what's needed, and you know, what do they wish they had known now, and what the key challenges are to translate that to my students. Even as the opportunity to have them act as the proverbial aunts and uncles, you know, when mom says it and dad says it, it's not cool, nobody listens when they say, “hey, you need to have a good lab notebook,” but then when the industry person comes in, who works at Pfizer now, and they're like, "Hey, you actually need to have really good notes, that's really, really important,” like you kind of have to do that. Then it's like it makes more sense, and now it's like, "Oh, this is a transferable skill that I know how to use an electronic notebook,” or, you know, "I keep track of the lot numbers.” So, you really got in the trenches, and you learned, you know, in a holistic way, a pedagogical way, through experience, how to be a better educator, and how to do engineering education, in particular. And I want to hear about what your role is now, you know, like as an engineering educator, but now. So, in the admin, so you're kind of, in a way, running the entire program, or thinking about the engineering design of all of the students at Carnegie Mellon.

  Conrad

  Right. Thank you for that. So, to back up a little bit, I was the associate department head for education in the biomedical engineering,

  Liz

  That's the ass head.

  Conrad

  Yes, that's the ass head. Yes, thank you. Let's go ahead and get that story out. This is a shout out to my daughter Katie Zapanta, who has her own podcast. We'll leave that in.

  Liz

  Oh, okay! Links in the bio. [Laughs]

  Conrad

  She was our drama student in the family. She actually majored in drama here at Carnegie Mellon and is living the New York life now, working for a talent agency on Broadway. She always writes our Christmas letter, because she's always been the storyteller, and then she went on to major it in dramaturgy. You can google that, folks. We won't go into what it means now, but in the Christmas letter, when I went from associate department head to associate dean of undergrad studies in the college, her comment in the letter was, Dad went from associate department head to associate dean, but he's still an ass.

  Liz

  [laughs]

  Conrad

  That's where it came from. I have embraced that. I sit in a lot of meetings with other associate department heads, both at CMU and elsewhere. For the CMU folks, not so much for the other folks, because I don't know them as well outside the university. I always refer to us as ass heads. Yeah, and some take it better than others.

  Liz

  Well, you know, I will say that's why we hate universities, because you need your kid to be able to artfully say you're an ass without saying you're an ass. [both laugh]

  Conrad

  So, let's think about the levels of which you're affecting students, you know. So, there's the classroom level, right, where you are literally know the old term sage on the stage, where you know the way we were taught to good chance going old school was someone pontificated for 45 minutes, may have had some examples, some Q and A, you spent most of the time furiously writing, and then you reviewed your notes, you did the homework, went to office hours, and that was it. You know, now I think we've actually gone to the- a little more active learning, you know, just starting with our favorite term, think-pair-share, and then you know to where you just have the student think about what was just said, share it with someone else, and then perhaps sharing out from there.

  Liz

  Yeah, in a warm cold call. I learned what a warm cold call was.

  Conrad

  That’s right. I have not heard that one, but that makes sense. So, I think being in industry, I've always been very hands on, because as a student I was very much one of those pain in the butt kids who said, well, when is this going to be useful, and I think you know, so when I say a concept, a problem, an example of when, as working in industry, you may have to decide whether or not your testing is sufficient to meet the FDA requirements or not, right? Just an example, at some point you will use this information in industry, and I think back to our previous conversation, that was always something that was important to me, that I could say one: based on my experience, this is why this will be important to you in your next life, but two: I also still maintain contacts. We've talked to alumni, even though it's been a while since I've been in industry. This is still why, I can tell you why whatever we're learning in class is tied to something that you will learn later on in life. So, I think that has always driven my- both the hands-on part, but also how this will be useful later on. I've always tried to emphasize that. I don't want to be teaching something for teaching's sake. We have to be really cognizant of, you know, stepping back. Why is this course important? How does this fit in the curriculum, and even beyond that, why, as a department, do we think this concept, or whatever, is important, and what courses support that as well? So, doing at the department level, at classroom level, is one thing, doing at the department level is number two, but now the opportunity to do it at the curricular level, to me, is just a great opportunity.

  Liz

  And how do you scale that? I kind of imagine it's so much easier to move those needles when it's your one class. The scaling is about integrating people and their different learning styles, or let me say, their teaching styles, their teaching abilities, capacities for teaching, i.e. do they have the right skill set, do they have the time, the training to do those kinds of things. What is the implicit discipline trying to, you know, was there vision for education, i.e. can we have a single biomedical engineering degree, or is it going to be dual? But what are some of the challenges that you see at the dean level, where I guess you're also synthesizing between what, 12 different departments or something like that?

  Conrad

  For us, it is six programs in five departments. So, at Carnegie Mellon, we have civil engineering, environmental engineering, both live within the department name, adequately, civil and environmental engineering, chemical engineering, material science engineering, mechanical engineering, and electrical and computer engineering, and then on top of that we have additional majors in biomedical engineering, engineering design, innovation, and entrepreneurship, and engineering and public policy. You know, so from a curricular standpoint, I think there's two parts. One, as the college, we do have control, and I will say control over the college requirements. So, if you think about, in order for someone to graduate, there are three sets of requirements that have to be met. One's university requirements, that could be a first-year writing course or humanities course that everyone has to take, for instance. There are college requirements, that could be calculus, physics. For us, it's also a, an expressional learning requirement that we can get into later on, it's also some general education requirements in various categories that are non-technical that they have to fulfill, and then there's the departmental requirements, right? And so, I think that you know when I come up with a, for instance, for a new thrust I want to go into, so I heard this AI thing's not a passing fad, so one thing that I think all our universities and departments are thinking about is what is the role of not just using AI to teach, but what should our students know? How are they going to work when they graduate in an AI-enabled world, and how do we prepare them to do that? But I think you know that is to me, just using as an example, it's an opportunity to help shape, and this is going to sound really haughty, shape and influence the lives of engineers coming out of here for the next how many years. It's also exciting to do it as well.

  [Music Break]

  Liz

  Yeah, I'm getting a nice picture of what you really do, so you're also thinking about what's currently needed in engineering education based on the current needs, maybe also looking backwards to think, where are students now? So, are there kind of deficiencies, or which can sound like it has a negative connotation, but what are some areas of improvement based on what's coming out of the high school pipeline? And then also, what's a new skill that people might need coming out on the societal aspect, and so is this a really good- and then you get to do those, or the levers that you have at the college level is to kind of say their requirements that you can ask the departments downstream to say your departments must have these criteria, thinking about it.

  Conrad

  Correct. And I think one thing, just to caveat that you've now been a faculty member for long enough, Long enough, where I think you realize that departments, faculty don't like being told what to do by the Dean's office, and so I think that is-

  Liz

  Well first of all, your emails are too long, you know. Just tell me in the title. [laughs]

  Conrad

  This is why we have Chat GPT.

  Liz

  I'm joking with you, but, like, you know, everything is read the emails, it's very funny.

  Conrad

  No, but I think, yes, I try not to be an administrative burden, but I do think, you know, there’s that part of the job, and I should also caveat, for all of you who's saying, “Dr. Zapana, I would want to do this job,” there is the other part of the job, which is the administrative job, you know, we keep the trains running, we do class schedules, one thing I make sure students who perhaps are struggling gain support. I spend a lot of time, you know, actually in a serious note, the departments will say so-and-so is struggling. It could be financial, it could be academic, it could be mental health, a lot of reasons. And as a college department and university, we have those meetings, so I would say that, you know, it's the for those cases very few students, the I would call it the 5% rule, take up 95% of my time in that space. So, there are difficult conversations had, you know, and I would say that is very different than the curricular part of the job, but it's also an important part of the job as well, too. So, for all those kids out there who want to be an ass dean when they grow up, it is just not the curricular part, it's the student success part. But part of the curriculum is to support the student, both on the academic side, but also on the non-academic side.

  Liz

  Yeah.

  Conrad

  Just had to throw that out there, in case everyone thought this was just a lovely job, just doing curriculum.

  Liz

  It is a lovely job, and I think it's a job that we need. But now the question is, and I'm going to actually give a story now, if I can, that's going to prompt my question. I have a cousin, she is in her 20s, and she's one of those adults who doesn't know how to ride a bike. And then I was with her, and I have a bike, I like riding bikes, and trying to show her how to ride a bike. She was visiting, and I was like, well, I want to help you learn how to ride a bike, and then she said, “yeah, okay, well, I'm going to go on YouTube now, and I'm going to learn how to ride a bike from YouTube.” And I looked at her, but I'm right here, and I can tell you, I can help you, and she's like, "No, I want to go on YouTube, and you know, I want to go find a video about a person who's also an adult who's learning how to ride a bike, so I can experience them learning how to ride a bike and get the step by step and the emotional and the social.” So she was just, you know, kind of explaining it to me about why she thought YouTube was the place to go, and I really, in my mind, just thought, "Oh no, we're ruined,” you know, like why would she want that? And I think that there are so many people, not just for riding bikes, but for all these kinds of things, where they go, "Why do I need a university to learn when there's all these tools?” And I think you've already kind of answered it in some way, but I want to begin having this discussion about what roles universities serve in our society now. Why do you think that's so important to kind of like have that reinforced in the public imagination.

  Conrad

  That's not a politically charged question at all, but I think it's an important question to ask.

  Liz

  I think it's a societal question.

  Conrad

  It is, and so I thought about this one. And I think that there's a few ways to go, so let's start with number one, and this perhaps is very controversial, but-

  Liz

  I'm ready, Dr. Z, I'm ready.

  Conrad

  The thing I think about when we went through, so I'm slightly older than you, but when we went through college, I mean, through high school, elementary, middle school, high school, it was pretty much banged into our heads, you have to go to a four year college in order to be successful, and they're now looking back, and especially with a little age with some miles on the tires, and looking at, you know, we're involved with STEM outreach and things like that, my wife and I, at our kids' high schools and middle schools and elementary schools, but also realizing then there are other pathways for careers and I think where I'm going with this is that the message has always been you need to go get a four year degree to be successful. I would posit that not everyone needs to attend a college or university to have a successful career, and so that is very much controversial, but I do think we have done disservice to two-year degrees, to folks doing associates, perhaps there's an online access. I think that you know, for better or worse, the stereotype of someone who's just spent $200,000 for a four-year degree and is working an hourly job at a car wash, you know, and I think I don't want to unpack what major they chose or what choices, but I think you know we have to do a better job of explaining not everyone needs to go to college, so that's number one.

  Liz

  Yeah, and then before you move on, I kind of want to talk about that, because I know you kind of said, we're taught that a four-year degree is like the way to have future success, and what I want to bring up is that wasn't always the case for what I was told. Okay, and I think that there's some, you know, the implicit kind of class or kind of background kind of things that are built into who gets taught that and who doesn't.

  Conrad

  That is also true.

  Liz

  Which is also kind of based in, you know, what you, what your next comment was, which I also agree with, that I don't know if everyone should be in a four year university degree, but that's still not to say that the place of universities and higher education at large, shall we say, is not a place for learning versus just doing a free form YouTube learn how to ride a bike.

  Conrad

  Correct.

  Liz

  So, making that distinction first is important, that maybe instead of just saying pure universities, but thinking broadly about higher education, and we should be diversifying and thinking about that.

  Conrad

  So, there are different pipelines as well, too.

  Liz

  It is true that either you think college gets you a certain thing, and I also know there are other people who don't, and you know it causes some - I won't call it stress, but I let's say for those people who are first gen, the first people in their family to go to college, this causes a lot of stress because no one's done that before, and they're like, why are you not working with your hand, you should be at home, you should be contributing to your family, this is the way to get ahead, right? So, there are these different pipelines, as you mentioned.

  Conrad

  right? So, thank you for that. So, we have that. Now, then so let's say now we're at college or university.

  Liz

  Yes, let's talk about that.

  Conrad

  This is where I always tell students, so I have the honor of being the first faculty member they actually hear from when the first-year students arrive on campus. And one thing that I mentioned as part of that, so it's our convocation for the College of Engineering, the welcome and all.

  Liz

  The one where you make the new grass and you just put out a new turf or grass every year? [laughs]

  Conrad

  Google that at Carnegie Mellon, we don't have large indoor spaces, so we create them. In any case, so one thing I say is so much of your education is not just in the classroom, it's with the people you work with, so let's surround it from there, positing that you are then going to a college or a university, you are joining a community. So, I think one thing I always say from a parenting standpoint is you always want to know who your kids are hanging out with, right? Because, and my parents told me that. Because you will become who you surround yourself with, so let's just work with that. Universities are full of people who are looking, at least they should be looking for what that next thing is, and so I would think that in the cases of where I've been worked at, and we'll say that we're in engineering schools, they tend to attract certain kind of people with work ethic, different learning styles, perhaps different interests. You're going to have conflict. You got to figure out how to work with people of different backgrounds, different belief systems, different cultures. College provides the opportunity for that, both inside and perhaps more importantly, outside of the classroom, so one thing that I would say that is providing that you could say, yeah, of course, you can have conflict online on a Zoom classroom, and things like that, but I think it's one thing to say and try to resolve those things with your camera off in a Zoom room versus sitting down with a person face to face. I think that think of team conflicts as well, too. So, I would say that one thing I've seen where that I think that really has proven out, when Covid happened, a lot of students who were in high school at the time did not have extracurricular activities because they just canceled all of them. For good reasons, not going to argue with that, but because they didn't have those opportunities outside of the classroom, they didn't get a chance to have conflict, and then perhaps most importantly, resolve that conflict. So, let's play that forward when I get them in my senior design class, and the teams invariably have conflict. For that crop of students, it felt like they had problems resolving conflict that I had not seen before, because they never had opportunities to resolve conflicts. So, let's go back to university. That's where it goes. Is that the opportunity to be together in a group for a common goal, whether it be academic or non-academic, provides ways of growth that could not be found by watching a YouTube video or even online education. So, I think that is important. So back to the original premise, you become who you surround yourself with. So, I think about, you know, forming those study groups, forming those folks who will push you to say, "Well, I don't understand that. Can you help me? If I can teach someone else about a concept, it's a good chance to understand that concept as well, too.

  Liz

  Yeah, I think you're kind of getting at this question of what the core problem or challenge opportunity that universities give you that other learning platforms don't.

   

  Conrad

  Now, I think- have some platforms gotten better with that? Yes, I think the pressure on educators has always been, you know, we want students to learn, and we want to give them activities which will help them do that. So, again, you know, I think having taught on Zoom and doing in person, it can be similar experiences, but a very different experience. So, I would say, you know, I think when I'm in the middle of one of my active learning sessions, and students are discussing a topic or a concept, the ability from my end to walk around from group to group to listen to the conversations to provide my input, and then see where common problems are, and things like that. The role of the professor is just not to pontificate, the role of the professor is to help students learn, and how do you do that? I think you give students the opportunities to apply what they're doing in real time, not just on the homework and not just on the exam. So, is that possible to do that online? Perhaps. I would make the case that it's much more effective when you do that in person.

  Liz

  I would agree with that, and I think what I've experienced is the outside opportunities from the classroom also really shape that experience and kind of synergize with what happens in the classroom.

  Conrad

  Right.

  Liz

  So, when you get to talk with faculty in office hours, like now.

  Conrad

  In Office Hours.

  Liz

  When you get to maybe do research, or you know, talk to other people, and really learn and immerse yourself in that culture, in this being an intellectual culture, it's groundbreaking, you know. When I was a student, realizing that I actually did, in fact, learn some chemistry, when, like, oh, Beer's Law is how this spectrophotometer is working, and I, I thought I was just detecting how much of this alliance theory agent worked, but turns out that's the ABC law from general chemistry, which I absolutely hated, and that's really, really useful. I also remember sophomore year just thinking, oh, I want to do research, I'll ask my optics professor, whose class I had just finished, if I could work in his lab, and then I, you know, I walked with him, I asked him. He said, "Yeah, sure.” And then later on, I realized he's like a demigod in his field, you know, like he's got like one of those like 5000 paper-citation papers, right, that everyone just keeps citing, and I just had no idea, but that proximity to this faculty provides an opportunity that, like, cold call, I probably would have never gotten.

  Conrad

  Correct.

  Liz

  To be able to be in that atmosphere, and to get the not just the mentorship, but the sponsorship, someone now saying, I know this person, and I'm going to train you, and let you go to conferences, and I'm going to write letters for you, and that provides that opportunity that you can't just get, and the last thing I'll say, as I think about it, I went to Penn for undergrad, and I, so I went to an Ivy, and I remember, like, maybe junior year, kind of really clicking with physics, which was my undergrad major. You can study that, and it's- Isaac Newton is the same at most universities, the top 50, it's going to be kind of consistent education, like it's really so hard to not do F equals MA, but if you don't talk to faculty, if you don't go to the Center for Undergraduate Research, or like these kind of collaborative hubs they have, go to these presentations and seminars, these events that they have, workshops, that's how you're wasting your money. You got to go get the experience, and you have to put yourself out there. You have to take part in all the opportunities there, and that's where the real interest is. And that's why some people have a hard time, because they'll say things like, "I went to Penn. How come I'm not getting jobs?” Like, well, you can't just go to Harvard, you have to do things.

  Conrad

  And I think that that's important too.

  Liz

  You can’t just go to Carnegie Mellon [Laughs]

  Conrad

  Or find schools that BMES is working with, but going back, I think you know the one thing back again to the original question. What makes universities worth it? Why should we have them? I think you know we talked about the community of the students, but also I think, as you just pointed out, the faculty, the staff, you know, and I think that creates that learning community to have that give and take, to be challenged. I would make the case that that challenge part I think is important, and Liz, you kind of adjusted that it is one thing just to go to classes and to, you know, get the grade and move on, and a lot of folks will do that no matter where they go, but the art of recovering from a struggle, going to the office hours, talking to professors, the student success center. I think it's the process to get that degree, to learn that knowledge, to complete that class and get a grade is almost more important than the material you actually learn. I'm looking at the textbooks that are sitting across on my bookshelf, how much of that do I really remember the content versus how much do I remember the process, the way to think, and so you know that's almost more important, if not more important than the actual material themselves. So back to university environment, you know, as well, you're putting yourself, if we're doing it right as university, preparing students for that next thing, you know, grad school, professional school, industry job, we have to make sure it is our responsibilities that we stay relevant.

  [Music Break]

  Liz

  Actually, let me stop you there a little bit to subtrace that, and I like that you talked about how to stay relevant, because I think we've mentioned lots of things that universities still do well, but you know, times are changing, and universities, by the way, I don't think this is a new phenomena, but universities always change their mission and perspective. That's why we have higher administrative leadership to help us adapt to those changes. So, in today's time, how might universities maybe be falling short? In other words, why is it that yes, if we're doing so well, these other narratives still have some like place in the imagination. So, what are universities not doing so well right now. How are they falling short?

  Conrad

  So, I do think you know one thing, for just from so do you mean falling short societal, or falling short supporting students that are at the university, or both? [Both laugh]

  Liz

  I imagine they're related, right? What do you think?

  Conrad

  So, I think one thing from a university standpoint is accessibility, right? So, if you are going to say, why should I spend $200,000 to come to your university, and especially if I'm going to take a lot of debt for doing it, we have to basically have majors, pathways to demonstrate that this is why the investment is worth it long term, and there have been studies to show that why that four-year degree may be relevant. Now, I would also make the case from that standpoint, high schools could do a better job, perhaps, of saying just because you're interested in x doesn't mean you should major in x, that might not be a career.

  Liz

  Interesting.

  Conrad

  And again, I don't want to be judging other non-STEM careers, because my experience is solely in STEM. So, I do think, you know, there is the, but I don't want to go, you know, full political spectrum here, but I do think, you know, there has been this bias that universities are out of touch with the people. Let's just leave it with that, but I do think that's why it's important for faculty to remain relevant, not just from their technical standpoint, but also, what are they doing? How does that relate to the real world? And I think how would be used, and that's why to me it's always very important too. So, we'll do this, for instance, as a department, but also as a college. We'll bring a bunch of alumni in, we'll bring a bunch of folks from the community, and say, what do you think of us? What do you think? How is our work relevant to what your needs are?

  Liz

  So, would you say from that perspective when we say that we're falling short, is that we're not advocating or communicating enough what we do to people, or that we're just not asking people to tell us about their impact?

  Conrad

  I think the answer is yes, it's both. So, I think you know one thing that Carnegie Mellon, in our case, I'll speak to, we used to be a smaller regional school that became more research-intensive. It was very well known, when I was here, in the Western Pennsylvania area, but then not as well known, perhaps, or just starting to become more well-known across the nation. As we do that here, we are still a part of the Pittsburgh community. Here at Carnegie Mellon, even though we now have an international outreach, we are intentional about making sure we stay local. So, I think you know, as we, for instance, created a new robotics innovation center and a new manufacturing institute on old steel mills, we also work with the local community to say, hey, this new robotics institute that we're building, there are now careers in robotics, and we're going to work with local high schools and two year colleges to help you. So, even though, if you don't attend Carnegie Mellon, we want to make sure our impact is still felt locally.

  Liz

  Right. And I would imagine this is getting into some of why universities exist historically, because you are actually trying to run state land-based grants that fund institutions, or to actually generate knowledge and information that could be used for a public good.

  Conrad

  Correct.

  Liz

  What do you think that you might say universities are doing today that long no longer makes sense?

  Conrad

  I think, for better or worse, and I'm going to say that as an administrator, and for those of you who are the victims of this, I do realize that you know this is not an easy conversation to have or to hear. Universities perhaps have more majors than they can sustain. In the end, we require resources from either the state, or from tuition, and perhaps in some cases our endowment, to be able to run certain programs and faculty, right, and so if we don't have students in those programs, we need to eliminate them or consolidate. Which sounds awful, I know, because, and again, we're speaking from- and I think Liz, you appreciate this, STEM programs typically don't get eliminated, right?

  Liz

  Well, physics, the sciences, like sometimes, but not engineering ones.

  Conrad

  Not engineering ones, right? So, let's just maybe, for an engineering standpoint, they typically don't - they may get folded in smaller programs. So, I think that we have not experienced that painful one, but friends in the humanities have. So, I think that universities do have to be good stewards of the resources they have, and having a major with two people or one person in the last four years is not a good steward of that. Think of it this way, going back to the original, why are universities important? They are creating technologies, innovations, pedagogy, that can be put back into the community, both locally and in society as well. I think we can make the case that a lot of technical advances would not have happened if we didn't have universities.

  Liz

  I also think, in terms of things that no longer make sense, I think that the current climate of academia is requiring us painfully to be more fiscally responsible in a way that, let's say, knowledge for the sake of it, pure knowledge generation, enthusiasm, incitement, intellectually derived education, it's like inversely correlated to like systemic, strategic, focused, financial driven productivity research, like what's the word, like metric driven outcomes.

  Conrad

  KPIs.

  Liz

  KPI, key performance indicators.

  Conrad

  Yeah, we had to work that in here somewhere today. [laughs]

  Liz

  I think that universities kind of work in this system of intellectual pursuit being the priority, and then financial kind of responsibility being secondary, and I think that may have worked for a while. One, because the state was significantly funding these pursuits, we had maybe lower numbers of students, and also some of the education was not as expensive to do, like you could have that building that's from the 1800s or 1900s now, whereas you know we need to keep updating our labs. We have to have all these facilities and resources, and pay the people to run them, so it costs a lot more money to do things now. And state funding has dwindled significantly, and there are more people going. And so I do see this shift towards more key performance indicators. Yes, and I hate to say it's a falling short, maybe more no longer making sense instead of just falling short, because the finances, the math isn't mathing, and now we actually have to do math in this regard, whereas in a pure intellectual pursuit as a faculty, I'd rather not have my potential limited as a professor in terms of what I can teach or do, or even get my students to do limited by the numbers, but now it's like, no, actually, you have to do numbers.

   

  Conrad

  And I think you know that that also may be a thought as well, too, is that sometimes, as academics, we do this research, we don't do a good job explaining about how it's relevant, so one opportunity, you know, as federal grants have diminished, or perhaps have shrunken down a little bit, people just say, "Why wouldn't industry do this?” So, I do think there is a partnership that we can start working with closer, and also think about the show why certain things that we discover in the labs are relevant, but also along the line keeps us relevant as well, too, by I don't say forcing, but encouraging us to work with industry partners. Now, I do think that for some academics, so back to your earlier statement, right, the act of doing research should be enough, and the discoveries we make, but I think making it relevant and showing its relevance to the public is important as well. Now that I sit here in the Dean's office, I do read, you know, a lot more closely when a university has their annual report, and I always want to find that page that says, and these are all the technologies we spun off, these are the companies we form, here are industrial partnerships, here are the local health programs that we've made, you know, these are the outreach we've done with these teachers we've trained. You know, there's things like that where I think we have to do a better message of getting all that out of how university colleges are helpful, are essential to creating those technologies, those pedagogies.

  Liz

  Yeah, making it really meaningful. And if all we hear is the football game night, you know. Then that's a little bit different of a sell, because then it sounds, yeah, it just sounds different. I have one more question for you before we go to thinking about the future of higher education, and that is, like, do you think that universities adapt quickly enough to changes in technology and workforce needs? And let me first also preface, for people who may not know, that there's a, like, a precursor to this question, which is, should universities even care about technology or workforce needs? Some people think that universities are asked about teaching core basic knowledge, not application. So, should we care about workforce needs? Now, in reality, we usually do at some level, but there's always that tension of, like, how much should they be learning on the job versus industry always saying no; they want you to know that beforehand.

  Conrad

  Right.

  Liz

  Now, with that context, do you think we're adapting quickly enough, or should we adapt at all to technology or workforce needs?

   

  Conrad

  So, I will go back to my training at Carnegie Mellon in the late 80s and 90s. We had very few labs, very few labs, the rationale was we teach you the theory, we teach it the knowledge, you'll figure out how to apply it that first year in grad school or in industry, and I would say that that worked for some students, but not for a lot of students. So I think that we have to get back to my, I think a theme that you've all sensed from me here is universities need to stay relevant, and part of that is we're talking workforce needs, talking to industry, figuring out where our students go, whether it be industry or grad school, but then I would also make the case a lot of the folks who go to grad school are there's a good chance we'll end up in industry at some point in time anyway, because not everyone with a PhD is in academia. So back to that the question you asked, we cannot stay static, and we need to always be talking to our industrial partners, our advisory boards, doing surveys for alumni, but I think a challenge here is that we're preparing students for jobs that don't exist yet, it's similar to our AI conversation we had earlier. There are going to be new tools coming out tomorrow, next week, the week after that, five years from now. What we're teaching is a mindset. We're teaching students to be adaptable. A term of course is always lifelong learning, teaching students how to learn, and I would say lump that in back to why universities are useful, you know, teaching you how to learn, you know, project-based work is a great place for that, working in your lab, perhaps. You know, I don't know what I don't know yet, right? But then, how do I find that out?

  Liz

  Yeah. And then time management, multitasking, collaborative work, integration, all those important skills, and I think you, you subtly mentioned an important point about universities adapting, that you know, when I hear criticism about universities not adapting to workforce needs at all, or not fast enough. The reality is that the process of curriculum development and design and integration across multiple classes, let alone multiple colleges, like departments and students, takes time. It takes structure. It can take over a year to do that, and so there's a danger in trying to introduce changes that are too fast, because it becomes deployed ineffectively, makes more people pissed off. And sometimes you have to make sure that the trend you're trying to adapt to is actually going to last. So, imagine doing all that coursework, preparation, and change, and no, that was actually a fad, and then industry says the next year, oh, I want something else, and that does happen. So you kind of do have to have this balance between, yeah, I want you to be prepared, and yes, you know, these employers said they want this skill set, but also, what do we need, and what do you want to take out, so does that mean they shouldn't learn heat transfer anymore, because they've only got, like, you know, four classes a year kind of space, how many credit hours, and so you have to always choose which things you're taking in and out, and that I would say is something universities do well, but it is such a, the ass part of being the ass dean that people don't get to hear or see that faculty spend a lot of time thinking about. Or they don't know that we're doing, we're actually curating experiences for you. When I became a faculty, I did not realize how much time we spend in faculty meetings talking about student education. Like, I was led to believe that faculty are just so, like, self-centered, like they were just like, 'I only care about myself and my lab and money, and that's all I care about.” And all of a sudden, I became the janitor of the department, like, we care about everything, and we curate every experience that a student's getting.

  Conrad

  And I think you know that's interesting, that what students are doing well or not now. I think that potentially we can go in the other direction and become too not student focused but consumer focused.

  Liz

  Phew. Thank you. [laughs]

   

  Conrad

  Right, we had to be student focused, but you know sometimes, and this is going to sound incredibly parental, we have life experiences that are different from the students. We're here to help you step back and say, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Just because you have the opportunity to take seven classes a semester, and you're just stressing over it and pounding through, maybe you should take these four instead, and you really spend some time diving into this and thinking.” We have to be mentors, but also sometimes we have to be advocates, but also sometimes we have to say no as well, too. So, I think there's this attitude of yes, universities are here to serve the students, but it's not a consumer enterprise as well.

   

  Liz

  Yeah, I do think that is something I want us to kind of recover from in the COVID era, but to kind of reinforce, because I think some of the shift in, like, where the universities are useful or not, is a consumer focus makes it flexible, it makes it the customer is always right. But the customer can be sold, the bandwidth can be given to something else, whereas where we care about student focus and student growth and opportunities, and we're trained to give you that, so trust us to do that right, and like give the trust back to us, or trust us to do that thing, versus consumer, which is like you're rating me, and like I don't like how you make me feel, so I'm done.

  Conrad

  One thing that universities have failed is that we tend to think, “heck, yes, we believe we are the domain expert, and we know what's best for you as well,” and we're not going to change our curriculum, we're not going to take out this class, etc. etc. etc. So, sometimes we're guilty of not being flexible ourselves, because we think everything's important. So, back to your comment, you know, as I look to add curriculum, I have to make sure I take something off. Engineers, and especially biomedical engineers, haven't been looking at a lot of curriculum, tend to have some of the highest course requirements, compared to other disciplines. And so you're already jamming so much in. In four years, we can't teach everything. There may have to be something to come out if we add that thing, and then maybe we don't need 135 units, maybe 130 would just be fine, or 125, because we think perhaps incorrectly that everything is important. And this is where I throw in, because we haven't used the word ABET yet, being an ABET person myself, ABET is not a four-letter word, technically.

  Liz

  [laughs] Starts with an A though.

  Conrad

  Yeah, but we can't use the excuse, well, ABET requires it. Actually, ABET is pretty darn flexible. They have certain minimum requirements of science and math, and you have to hit certain areas, but it's up to the department to the program to figure out how to do it, so I would make the case that sometimes programs, universities aren't innovative enough, because they tend to think, well, we've always done it this way, we don't want to disrupt things.

  Liz

  That’s spicy, name names! [laughs]

  Conrad

  That would be inappropriate... for those who wanted to buy me drinks we can do that, but...

  Liz

  You know what, BMES Orlando, are you going?

  Conrad

  I'll be there.

  Liz

  Right. I'm all on that drink. Anyone mention this podcast in October, because we have those names, names, and names. I want to transition to, like, the future of higher education, and I want to, you know, kind of think about what you just said about BME, and you know, which classes we choose to form out someone's BME education. I think BME kind of is a degree of the future, in the sense of it being so interdisciplinary, so involved in other fields, and you can do cell work or never touch a cell, and it's still biomedical engineering. And so, looking ahead, not only is education evolving, but because of the nature of BME, it's really been an interesting test bed to see that evolving, and so what does the next version of the university, and maybe biomechanical engineering in higher education, look like?

  Conrad

  That's a great question. I know many schools have looked at this and have different ideas. I would posit the case that not every school needs to look the same. Now, at its core, we're developing technologies to improve, to solve biological and medical problems, so we want to be very inclusive. I think you appreciate this, Liz, about some departments are called bioengineering, some of the departments are called biomedical engineering, and then we have the occasional biological engineering as well, too. So, we're going to be inclusive for everybody, even though at BMES I had these fights in the late night, as to are you a bioengineering program? Are you a biomedical engineering program? That's very controversial. So, going back to the future, you know, I think the opportunities are there. We've always talked about making our technologies more accessible. I think that is an opportunity that we have to keep on pursuing. I mean, in the end, just from a pure product standpoint, you could build the greatest widget ever, but if no one's going to buy it, doesn't really matter. And I think back to our technologies, we can have these great technologies to solve incredible medical problems, but if you can't make it accessible, that's not going to help a lot of this. So I do think that the opportunity for a future is to keep that in mind as these technologies are being developed, and also making sure students understand that, and that becomes part of their mindset from day one about how people can use these technologies, and that's not just Western, you know, that could be a Western civilization in a well-resourced area, low-resource areas, you know, it could be a rural state in the United States. There are many opportunities to address those inaccessibilities, and I think that is an opportunity for us to do, which kind of goes back to our previous comment. What have you ever seen done badly? That is something as well, too.

  Liz

  Now, How do you see AI changing the way students learn, and I guess how universities, you know, do this enterprise of the experience that we're cultivating for them?

  Conrad

  Right? So, AI, depending on who you believe and read, is either going to solve everybody's problems or it's the greatest evil ever, and it's going to turn all the students' minds to mush. AI is a tool. It's a very transformational tool, similar to what a slide rule would do. So, Dr. Matthews and I at Carnegie Mellon, shout out to Dr. Matthews. This, we do a slide rule demo every year during Engineering Week, break out a very large seven-foot-long slide rule.

  Liz

  You've never seen one before, right?

  Conrad

  If you've never seen one, you guys can go-

  Liz

  It's before your time.

  Conrad

  Dr. Wayne thinks I'm old enough to remember using it. For the record, I do have one sitting in my desk, and I break it out once a year to learn how to use it. There you go. You know that was a big deal when those came out, when pocket calculators came out, because people no longer use slide rules, and so the concern was that brains would turn to mush, they wouldn't know how to think anymore, you wouldn't learn how to estimate things like that. So, I think suffice to say, we did okay with that.

  Liz

  Yeah.

  Conrad

  So let's work with AI. AI is not the end-all be-all answer. It is a tool, and I want to emphasize the word tool. The tools are important on how you use said tools. So, our opportunity and challenge for students is to figure out how to use AI in a responsible way that allows them to not just use it ethically, obviously, but also are they able to assess the output they're getting and see if it is a good output or not. So, I think then we have to basically let them use those tools, teach them how to use those tools in an engineering context, and perhaps even a disciplinary context, in our case, biomedical engineering, to solve biomed problems. So, when they get out into the real world, they know how it fits within their workflow, so they can properly analyze the output, decide if the output is any good, and then go back in and change the prompts to perhaps get the output that is correct. So, you know one example that I will throw out there, and I need to try this, because I- they don’t let me teach as much anymore. Let's say this is a fluid mechanics class, you have to solve a pretty straightforward solution for Poisson flow. Right, there's two ways to do it. You can do it by hand. So, let's say half the class does it by hand, half the class does it using AI, and perhaps the AI reasoning can't solve that properly. This is why I need to try this, but choose any kind of concept. Then you compare the answers, right? So, perhaps the answer that AI got is not even close, or is kind of right, compared to the traditional answer, you know, the parabolic flow diagram. And then let's take that further. So, then the assignment then becomes, let's go back and look at our AI solution. What prompts do we have to change? How do we have to use the tool differently to get the correct answer? I think that's what the future is going to look like, is that it's not this evil thing that we shouldn't use. We can use it correctly. We have to be able to train students how to use it, but how to use it correctly, and then also give them the fundamental knowledge, so they can assess, is what I'm getting out of the AI correct or not.

  Liz

  You know, when I talk about my time at Carnegie Mellon, I often say, and you know, at Carnegie Mellon, it's computer first, human second, and it's true, there's just so much information about if you want a health class or anything about human biology, you got to go down the street to Pitt. Just go to Pitt, but if you want to know about a computer, you want to know about modeling computation, CMU is going to do that for you, and it does it really well. And I thought it was really interesting that even before ChatGPT kind of hit the scene in 2023 they were already integrating machine learning into master's programs and degrees, almost as if they knew this was going to happen, and that was quite interesting. So I really appreciate your perspective on this as a skill and a tool to embrace, and I thank you for all of your really honest takes on education and now biomedical engineering education, I know everyone appreciates you. This is why you're called Dr. Z. You're called Dr. Z at CMU, but I think now in the podcast, and for the whole nation, you're now just Dr. Z to, you know, all the biomedical engineering programs. All of BMES.

  Conrad

  I’m gonna make T-shirts, I'll make T-shirts.

  Liz

  Yeah, gonna put some hair on that shirt?

  Conrad

  That's a good question, right? Again, you know, for those who are watching in podcast land, let's just say that I think I'm a good-looking bald man. I like to say that, whether it's true or not, definitely bald.

  Liz

  I really admire Dr. Zapanta. Yes, he keeps his head well moisturized, very shiny.

  Conrad

  So, let's start with that. I think you know it is. It's nice to be famous and infamous just for the name, but also the head shape as well, too. It is, yes, it is a lot to take care of the scalp for those BMES, you know.

  Liz

  There you go. [laughs]

  Conrad

  You perhaps have seen me once or twice walking around with a band aid and afraid to ask questions. That could have been a shaving incident. And it only happens at conferences, I want to point out, never happens at home, it's only at conferences.

  Liz

  Well, I don't know. Yeah, let's... I mean, that's a good research project.

   

  Conrad

  We gotta unpack that one. That's a separate project.

  Liz

  We can unpack that. You know what? I think that there's probably some YouTube video out there that could help you learn how to shave. [laughs]

  Conrad

  But I think the important part, though, at some point you need to take it. I need to be going to a university where I can learn how to shave with other people instead of just watching a YouTube video, and then as a university we have to describe to people why it's important to be in a community of head shavers.

  Liz

  [laughs] To be in a community of other head shavers. No, this is good. We're gonna learn, and you're gonna be in a community of other people who shave their head, and it's gonna be so educational, and you're gonna, you know, Instagram page, you're gonna learn your transcript will have hair care management 101 and you'll be a graduate, and it'll just.. I'm just so proud, like it's full circle.

  Conrad

  Mantle products, but they don't exist anymore, just had to endorse them right there.

  Liz

  Yeah, so thank you, Dr. Conrad, Dr. Zapanta, as a former colleague of mine, where we used to work in the same department, now still colleagues, but in a national, communal sense. Thank you so much for joining us and sharing our perspective on education and how it's evolving, and what role universities still play and are still important for. If you'd like to learn more about what Dr. Zapanta has done as the Associate Dean at Biomedical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. We'll have some links in the episode description. And, as always, thanks to listening to Office Hours, I'm Liz Wayne. And I hope you enjoyed the show.

  If you have questions or ideas for a future episode, feel free to email us at communications@bmes.org You can also stay up to date by following us on social media at BMESSociety and visiting our website at bmes.org/podcast/office hours. We look forward to hearing from you, and hopefully featuring one of you on the podcast.

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