Since joining Rice in 1999, Ann Saterbak has worked with faculty members from the department to broaden bioengineering education and build nationally recognized, state-of-the-art undergraduate laboratories in experimentation and laboratory instruction. As a result of her efforts, she won the 2007 Robert G. Quinn Award by the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE).
In building the department’s undergraduate laboratory, Saterbak applied four years of industry experience working at the Shell Development Company. She has implemented new pedagogical methods and teaching standards to broaden students’ problem solving skills, scientific and technological literacy through real-world problems, inquiry-based learning, and hands-on experiences. Saterbak has developed laboratory courses in tissue culture, tissue engineering, bioprocessing, systems physiology, and mechanical testing. She has also developed laboratory objectives and assessment tools for laboratory courses in the George R. Brown School of Engineering and Wiess School of Natural Sciences.
In 2008, Saterbak implemented a new course through the school of engineering in which freshman students from multiple disciplines work in teams to solve contemporary, open-ended problems that orient around the skills of engineering evaluation, engineering modeling, and engineering design.
Through the support of a National Science Foundation Division of Undergraduate Education grant, Saterbak collaborated with colleagues to write the book, Bioengineering Fundamentals. Published by Prentice Hall, the textbook provides a new and unifying approach to the introductory, interdisciplinary fundamentals in biomedical engineering.
Saterbak has led several undergraduate educational initiatives at local and national levels. At Rice, she currently serves as Associate Chair for Undergraduate Affairs, and she is an active member on the Laboratory Coordinators Working Group.
On the national level, she is active in ASEE BED, the Biomedical Engineering Society, and the Partnership for Educational Biomedical Engineering Laboratories (PEBEL). She was elected to the ASEE board of directors in 2009.
Saterbak has been a frequent presenter of educational materials at annual ASEE and BMES conferences, and was invited by the Whitaker Foundation to be one of three educators to contribute to a white paper, which was highlighted as Best Practices for Laboratory Learning in Bioengineering. The paper "Educational Methods and Best Practices in BME Laboratories" was developed for a Whitaker Foundation Education conference and was published in Annals of Biomedical Engineering.
