An elective topic area course can be enhanced by including results of faculty research in the course. This allows students to see the boundary of current knowledge and offers them the chance to consider what future developments are likely, possible and needed. At NMSU we offer an introductory bioengineering course to both graduate and undergraduate students that has sufficiently limited prerequisites that it can be appreciated by both groups. An effort is made to show current challenges in the field and one way to do this is to incorporate current faculty research. Both challenges in bioprocess and biomedical engineering are addressed. Applications involving biophysics allows the students to see in a very basic way how mass, momentum, energy, and entropy balances along with principles of kinetics and transport processes can be employed in addressing biological problems. This is an effective way to open the eyes of engineers to living systems.