The Biomedical Engineering (BME) program, which is regularly ranked among the best in the country, has an annual budget of $23,600,000 and receives more funding than any other department within the Whiting School of Engineering.
According to James Aumiller, senior associate dean for finance and administration for the Whiting School, the BME program is unique because it receives funding from two different divisions of the University. The School of Medicine contributes $16,600,000 of the department’s budget, while the Whiting School supplies most of the rest.
The BME department also receives funding from federal grants and for performing contractual research for private organizations. The department pools all of these funds and distributes them to its different programs.
The BME department houses 480 undergraduate students, 222 graduate students, 25 post-docs and 40 primary faculty members. Twenty-two startups have been created based on the promotion, development and sale of technology that originated in the department.
The BME program provides students with extensive opportunities to do research, including at the undergraduate level. Freshman Jonathan Smith, a BME major, said that the Center for Bioengineering and Design was one opportunity that drew him to the University.
“It’s mostly a graduate program, but as an undergraduate you can work with it, and they partner really closely with the hospital, and you can go and actually observe doctors and talk to them about problems that they need solved, so it’s really good hands-on experience,” Smith said.
BME undergraduates can also work on design teams, in which students are faced with real-world problems that require engineering-based solutions. Jae Park, a freshman BME major, explained that this provides students with the opportunity to make an impact in their field.
“You get into a group, and then you actually work on a cause. You develop actual technology where you can get it in the market and make a difference. It’s not just a classroom kind of thing where you just learn, and that’s it. It’s like lab, where you develop things that actually change the world,” Park said. “You don’t get this kind of opportunity at other schools with the BME program.”
Some of the major items covered by the department’s budget include staff salaries, undergraduate and graduate programs, and student aid. Aumiller explained that the Whiting School as a whole uses a different budgeting process than the Krieger School of Arts & Sciences.
“The Krieger and Whiting Schools do not use the same formula for determining Academic department budgets. There are many shared department costs, for instance the departments within the Homewood Student Affairs and Library that are shared and reviewed by both schools,” Aumiller wrote in an email to The News-Letter.
In January, departments start to put together their budgets for the new fiscal year, which begins in July. These budgets are based on the costs that the departments’ programs incurred in the recent past.
“They review historical cost to run the department for staff salaries, adjunct faculty, TA support, and other specialty costs like Senior Design,” Aumiller wrote.
Because different programs within the BME department have varying needs, their operational costs will differ as well.
“Typically, departments with wet labs are more expensive to run than a computational department like Computer Science or Applied Math,” Aumiller wrote.
A department’s budget also includes elements that are not based on its historical costs and the upkeep of its programs.
“Once they have established their historical cost, the University provides guidance around salary increases, which they add to the historical cost and then add any other new initiatives and its associated cost to their budget request,” Aumiller wrote. “These requests are then reviewed by the Dean, and the Sr. Associate Dean for Finance & Administration.”
Research also comprises a large part of the department’s budget.
“For the most part, research dollars are a break even scenario. It covers the additional salary, supplies, and Ph.D. support,” Aumiller wrote. “The rest covers overhead cost like lab facilities, tech support, and some administration/compliance cost.”
Externally supported research comprises about 35 percent of the operating revenue of the Whiting School. The University guarantees about 75 percent of the faculty’s salary, and a remaining 25 percent comes from this block of research funding.
Dan Cronin, the senior associate dean for finance and administration in the Krieger School, explained that faculty members in the Krieger School are also guaranteed 75 percent of their salaries from the University.
“The school commits to supporting 75% of a faculty member’s appointment. Many faculty members choose to seek additional support, generally from external research grants,” Cronin wrote in an email to The News-Letter. “Approximately 17% of the Krieger School’s total operating budget comes from sponsored research, 9% comes from philanthropy. In fact, philanthropy is a critical aspect of our budget planning, and without it we wouldn’t be able to fulfill some of our pressing needs.”
To allow faculty to have more time to complete research, the Krieger School recently updated its sabbatical policy and now permits faculty members to take sabbatical leave more frequently.
The Krieger School of Arts & Sciences declined to share which of their departments receives the most funding.
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