Higbee, StevenMiller, SharonWaterfill, AbigailMaxey, KaylaStella, JulieWallace, Joseph2020-08-282020-08-282020-08-20Higbee, S., Miller, S., Waterfill, A., Maxey, K., Stella, J., & Wallace, J. (2020). Creating Virtual Spaces to Build Community Among Students Entering an Undergraduate Biomedical Engineering Program. Biomedical Engineering Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43683-020-00004-12730-5945https://hdl.handle.net/1805/23723This article is made available for unrestricted research re-use and secondary analysis in any form or be any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for the duration of the World Health Organization (WHO) declaration of COVID-19 as a global pandemic.After the transition to online instruction in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, students in our program lamented the loss of connection to their peers, more so than diminished access to faculty, teaching assistants, or other resources. Fortunately, given that the semester was well underway when the transition occurred and few students in our courses were new to our BME program, we feel that students missed out on relatively few formative community-building experiences. This would not be the case for a fall semester of online instruction, however, so we must take action for the sake of our incoming class of undergraduate students. Our experience from spring 2020 and our review of the relevant literature suggest that we can be successful at building community among our new cohort of BME students, regardless of the mode of instruction.en-USPublic Health EmergencyCOVID-19Biomedical EngineeringEducationVirtual LearningCase StudyArticle