The purpose of this work is to demonstrate the fabrication process of cleanroom-free solid metal microneedles and quantify their insertion profiles. Metal microneedles were created using a modified wire-bonding process and inserted into porcine tissue to determine the design efficacy. The microneedle arrays were analyzed using optical imaging and SEM. The insertion forces were measured using a combined uniaxial load cell and resistance measurement data. Microneedle arrays were successfully inserted into porcine tissues with high repeatability and reliability. These arrays demonstrate lower or equivalent insertion forces (less than 3 N) to other forms of microneedles in the literature, without the need for complex cleanroom fabrication processes. The microneedle fabrication method presented here rapidly produces mass-manufacturable, high-quality microneedle arrays with minimal insertion forces that can reliably penetrate tissue samples. The manufacturing method presented here achieved array densities as high as 3200 needles per square centimeter. These microneedle arrays demonstrate the simple fabrication of a reliable, high-density, pain-free drug delivery system with potential applications in biosensing and electric-field-modulated drug delivery.

First year engineering students begin their degree with pre-conceived notions of how the year will go, with respect to their academics, in addition to their social and spiritual lives. This thereby gives way to a loss of self-efficacy, associated with both engineering itself and their own self-concept led by that initial disconnection. Thus, it is important to understand what factors influence the connections between engineering self-efficacy and their academic, social, and spiritual life-habits. Life habits can be defined as any set of factors encouraging the growth of an individual, affecting an individual’s life, ranging from learning strategies to self-perception of oneself and everything in between. Previous research has explored the stressors specific to students in first year engineering and how this affects students’ wellbeing overall [1] - although not specific to the motivational belief that is self-efficacy and the effect it has on their entire life. Using an inductive thematic analysis [2] on responses written by students who completed a series of self-reflections after participating in Mental Wellness and Engineering Attributes seminars offered in their first year Engineering courses, this research explores the factors that influence the connection between self-efficacy and an individual’s personal growth as described through life habits. The five themes that were found were social/spiritual wellness in terms of a support system, a fixed academic mindset with an “all or nothing” behavior, the inability to cope with transitioning and adapting out of their previous institutions, harmful expectations, and the importance of finding a balance in their everyday lives. Given these findings, the connection between self-efficacy and life habits is prevalent both negatively and positively for first year engineering students. The results suggest that individuals in their first year of engineering are caught off guard by the difficulty of the program, leading to a loss of self-efficacy and the development of new negative learning strategies - until they discover how to succeed in engineering.

First-year engineering can be an overwhelming experience for students, and it is important to have regular check-in points for students as they transition to post-secondary education. Beginning in 2019, the Schulich School of Engineering (SSE) at the University of Calgary implemented mental wellness and engineering attributes modules across the first-year engineering curriculum. These modules focused on students’ overall development to support their success in the diverse world of engineering. In this paper, we give an overview of the program implementation during 2021-2022 and recommendations for effective implementation of such series based on our experiences. We also briefly present a summary of the students’ self-reflections from the first two years of the program. At the end of each module, we ask students a few open-ended questions to reflect on their experiences based on the materials covered in the module. In addition to these responses from different modules, the final self-reflection, where the students are asked to reflect on their journey as a first-year engineering student, is of immense help in enhancing our understanding of students’ perspectives. Analysis and review of these reflections help mold our strategies for future programming to support student wellbeing and academic and professional development.