Developing a Biomedical Stakeholder Café: Process, Development, Implementation and Lessons Learned

Developing and facilitating opportunities for students to engage with stakeholders in ways that are meaningful and educational is challenging in academic settings. This work presents a student-stakeholder interactional model designed as an event to support upper-year engineering students during the needs assessment phase of the design process. Key elements of this model include stakeholder recruitment, student design team applications, student-stakeholder matching, preparatory student workshop, and student-stakeholder conversations. Additional critical considerations include financial support, event logistics, and scheduling and coordination of stakeholders and students. This model was implemented successfully in Fall 2023 as the Biomedical Stakeholder Café that supported over 100 students within 23 teams to connect with stakeholders. Model elements, including applications and preparatory workshop, addressed known issues with facilitating student-stakeholder interactions including students developing goals and successfully interacting with stakeholders. Organizational challenges related to time commitment and long-term funding are an area of on-going work and consideration.