ABSTRACT
As a tool for facilitating learning, disciplines have characterized higher education since the beginning of academic life. A transdisciplinary approach encourages knowledge integration rather than reduction. Bioengineering, or biomedical engineering, is a field that exemplifies the essence of transdisciplinary needs. One of the major challenges facing the field of bioengineering is its reliance on the knowledge and investigative approaches developed through the reductive method in the traditional compartmentalized disciplines. Lately, a converging sense is that future engineers must be creative, innovative, lifelong learners and effective communicators in technical and nontechnical forums and competitive in a global environment. Future engineers will have to wrestle with problems that are rooted in physical sciences, biological sciences, environmental sciences, arts, humanities, and social and behavioral sciences, in addition to the engineering aspects, in the spirit of seeking convergence to facilitate transdisciplinary integration of all these aspects as called for by the National Research Council of the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine.
