Assessing the Spectrum of International Undergraduate Engineering Educational Experiences
- Conference
- Location
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Atlanta, Georgia
- Publication Date
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June 22, 2013
- Start Date
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June 22, 2013
- End Date
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June 22, 2013
- Conference Session
- Tagged Topic
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ASEE International Forum
- Page Count
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13
- Page Numbers
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21.15.1 - 21.15.13
- DOI
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10.18260/1-2--17220
- Permanent URL
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https://peer.asee.org/17220
- Download Count
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519
Paper Authors
Mary E. Besterfield-Sacre University of Pittsburgh
Dr. Mary Besterfield-Sacre is an Associate Professor and Fulton C. Noss Faculty Fellow in Industrial Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh. She is the Director for the Engineering Education Research Center (EERC) in the Swanson School of Engineering, and serves as a Center Associate for the Learning Research and Development Center. Her principal research is in engineering assessment, which has been funded by the NSF, Department of Education, Sloan Foundation, Engineering Information Foundation, and NCIIA. Dr. Sacre’s current research focuses on three distinct but highly correlated areas – innovative design, entrepreneurship, and engineering modeling. She has served as an associate editor for the JEE and is currently associate editor for the AEE Journal.
Gisele Ragusa University of Southern California
Dr. Gisele Ragusa is an associate professor at the University of Southern California (USC). She is jointly appointed in the Viterbi School of Engineering's Division of Engineering Education and the Rossier School of Education. Her research interests and areas of expertise include: engineering education, STEM college access, STEM teacher education and retention, literacy education, content literacy, and global education as well as assessment and measurement in STEM education. She teaches courses in science education, measurement, literacy and language development, courses in learning and instructional theory, and teacher education research courses. She extensive expertise in assessment, psychometrics, advanced quantitative analyses, and multimodal research design.
Cheryl Matherly The University of Tulsa
Dr. Cheryl Matherly is Vice Provost for Global Education and Applied Assistant Professor of Education at the University of Tulsa, where she has responsibility for the strategic leadership of the university’s plan for comprehensive internationalization. Dr. Matherly’ special area of interest is with the internationalization of science and engineering education, specifically as related to workforce development. She directs the NanoJapan program, funded by the National Science Foundation in order to expand international research opportunities for students in STEM fields. NanoJapan was recognized by the Institute for International Education in 2008 with the prestigious Andrew Heiskell Award for Innovations in Study Abroad. She received a second NSF grant for a multi-phase conference, Strategic Issues in University Internationalization , that examined a comparative approaches in the US and Japan for the internationalization of science and engineering education. Dr. Matherly is the recipient of two Fulbright grants for international education administrators (Germany and Japan.) She has a BA in English and Political Science from the University of New Mexico, an MS in Education from Indiana University, and an Ed.D. in Education from the University of Houston.
Sarah R. Phillips Rice University
Sarah Phillips is the Education and International Initiatives Manager for the National Science Foundation Partnerships for International Research and Education (NSF-PIRE) "U.S.- Japan Cooperative Research and Education on Terahertz Dynamics in Nanostructures" grant at Rice University. In collaboration with the PI and Education Director, she manages all aspects of the NanoJapan: International Research Experience for Undergraduates Program. Since 2006, this program has sent 106 young U.S. engineering and physics students to Japan for research, language, and cultural study. She also manages the reciprocal NanoREIS: Research Experiences for International Students at Rice University which provides opportunities for students from the laboratories of our Japanese collaborators to come to Rice for short-term research internships. Since 2008, 60 Japanese students have come to Rice for research through this program.
Prior to her position at Rice, she worked at the Institute of International Education (IIE) on the U.S. Department of State funded Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship and completed a brief assignment at the IIE office in Doha, Qatar. She is currently pursuing a M.L.A. in International Studies from the University of St. Thomas, Houston and received her B.A. in History, Political Science, and East Asian Studies from Minnesota State University, Moorhead.
Larry J. Shuman
University of Pittsburgh
orcid.org/0000-0001-6884-7070
Larry J. Shuman is Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and distringuished service professor of industrial engineering at the Swanson School of Engineering, University of Pittsburgh. His research focuses on improving the engineering education experience with an emphasis on assessment of design and problem solving, and the study of the ethical behavior of engineers and engineering managers. A former Senior Editor of the Journal of Engineering Education, Shuman is the Founding Editor of Advances in Engineering Education. He has published widely in engineering education literature, and is co-author of Engineering Ethics: Balancing Cost, Schedule and Risk - Lessons Learned from the Space Shuttle (Cambridge University Press). He received his Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins University in Operations Research and a B.S.E.E. from the University of Cincinnati. Dr. Shuman is an ASEE Fellow.
Lucia Howard
Graduate Student pursuing M.A. in Industrial/Organizational Psychology at The University of Tulsa
Abstract
Assessing the Spectrum of International Undergraduate Engineering Educational Experiences International experiences are increasingly viewed as an important component ofengineering education. For accreditation, every engineering program must demonstrate that itsgraduates possess “the broad education necessary to understand the impact of engineeringsolutions in a global, economic, environmental, and societal context.” While it is left to eachindividual program to define what this outcome means and how it would be measured, implied isa requirement that engineering programs begin to address “global competency.” Yet little hasbeen done to define engineering global competency, specify alternatives for achieving globalcompetency, or determine to what degree global competency is the result of personal attributes,prior experiences, or curricular and even extra-curricular experiences. This paper presents results from the first phase of a multi-part study funded by theNational Science Foundation’s Research in Engineering Education (REE) initiative thatinvestigates how international experiences both in and outside of formal curricula impactengineering students’ global competency. To date, most evidence regarding impact ofinternational experience on engineering students is anecdotal, with little empirical research toguide educational practices. However, this anecdotal evidence does suggest that students whoparticipate in an international collaborative activities experience a unique set of challenges andopportunities that directly contribute to their acquiring the knowledge, skills, and behaviors of aglobally competent engineer. We develop a conceptual model for a globally competent engineerthat identifies the requisite knowledge, skills, and awareness, and the types of learningexperiences necessary to produce such an engineer. This study employed a Delphi method, a consensus-building process among carefullyselected experts who engage in interactive communication exercises to develop themes about atopic. Eighteen subject matter experts (SMEs) were recruited in approximately equal proportionfrom international education associations, universities with recognized international engineeringprograms, leaders in engineering education assessment, practitioners, government and industryrepresentatives. This Delphi, designed with three rounds and a final face-to-face summit, firstasked participants to respond to two open-ended questions: What are the specific knowledge,skills, awareness or values that you think characterize a globally prepared engineer? What arethe most effective types of learning experiences in producing (graduating) a globally preparedengineer? The responses from participants were content analyzed and used to develop a closed-form questionnaire distributed to participants in the second round of data collection. Participantsrank-ordered statements developed by researchers from the qualitative responses. Theresearchers included statements that majority of participants (> 80%) agreed upon as essential ininternational engineering education. The third and final rounds gave SMEs an opportunity torevise their judgments and clarify the reasons for disagreement with the statements. Results from this study broaden the knowledge base about how engineering studentsacquire global competence and the contextual factors that influence this acquisition. Thisresearch provides faculty with actionable information about institutional factors, curricular andextracurricular practices, and how these relate to student learning outcomes.
Besterfield-Sacre, M. E., & Ragusa, G., & Matherly, C., & Phillips, S. R., & Shuman, L. J., & Howard, L. (2013, June), Assessing the Spectrum of International Undergraduate Engineering Educational Experiences Paper presented at 2013 ASEE International Forum, Atlanta, Georgia. 10.18260/1-2--17220
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