Designing the first biosystems engineering program in China

The primary goal for the Biosystems Engineering program at Zhejiang University, which is the first of its kind in mainland China, is to train engineers who can integrate their knowledge in biology with engineering to solve problems pertaining to biological systems. The program features significant curricular revisions, a suite of new courses, and teaching innovations. The objectives of this study were: (1) to determine the degree to which the program's coursework satisfied the program's target learning outcomes from the points of view of (a) recent graduates of the program, (b) current senior students in the program, and (c) the program faculty; and (2) to determine any differences in assessments among the three groups. The results of the study showed that: (1) the recent graduates of the program, the current senior students in the program, and the program faculty decided, on average, that the curriculum coursework/activities met the first six target learning outcomes of the program - constituting most of the core engineering knowledge and skills of the program - very satisfactorily on five counts and satisfactorily on one count; and (2) the program faculty decided uniformly that the curriculum coursework/activities met the last six learning outcomes of the program - constituting the accessory knowledge and skills of the program, with one exception - very satisfactorily, while the recent graduates and the current senior students generally decided that the curriculum coursework/activities met the same set of learning outcomes satisfactorily. The new program has attracted high-quality incoming students, and recent graduates have very high employment rates. Emulating this pioneering Biosystems Engineering program, other Agricultural Engineering schools and departments at various universities in China are currently in the process of designing their own Biosystems Engineering programs.