BIOE 80 is an introductory bioengineering class at Stanford.This spring, we added a 'Build-A-Cell' nal project component to the class: each student would be re- sponsible for designing and documenting several genes considered essential to a growing and dividing cell.We will synthesize the students' DNA constructs, and test them independently and in concert in a cell-free reaction system.We intend to iterate the design and build every time the class runs, increasing the speed and complexity of development as our capacity and understanding grows.