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Creating an International Profile of a Degree Program in Mechanical Engineering

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Conference

2014 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Indianapolis, Indiana

Publication Date

June 15, 2014

Start Date

June 15, 2014

End Date

June 18, 2014

ISSN

2153-5965

Conference Session

International Division Technical Session 6

Tagged Division

International

Page Count

10

Page Numbers

24.331.1 - 24.331.10

DOI

10.18260/1-2--20222

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/20222

Download Count

341

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Paper Authors

biography

Martin Edin Grimheden Royal Institute of Technology (KTH)

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Martin Edin Grimheden is an associate professor in Mechatronics at KTH, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden, and head of the Mechatronics and Embedded Control Systems Division. Martin Edin Grimheden is also Program Director of the KTH Degree Program in Mechanical Engineering.

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Abstract

Creating an International Profile of a Degree Program in Mechanical EngineeringKTH, Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm Sweden, has taught mechanicalengineering since the middle of the 19th century. The current degree program in MechanicalEngineering is a five year program, based on a three years BSc program and a two year MScprogram. The program enrolls about 160 students every year.Starting in 2012, an international profile was established. Students of the degree programchoose during the first year to apply to an international profile based on one of threelanguages: Spanish, German or French. Acceptance criteria include good performance duringthe first year and language skills from prior studies.If accepted, these students are following a modified curriculum for their second and third yearof studies. For the second year, language courses spans the entire academic year andconstitute 27,5% of the entire curriculum that year. The third year includes a mandatoryexchange semester abroad, with engineering studies in the local language (Spanish, Germanor French).To facilitate for the exchange semester, KTH has signed exchange contracts with (so far)seven partner universities. Exchange semester curricula have also been established at eachpartner university, so that a prior agreement of the list of courses to be taken at eachuniversity is predetermined.These curriculums have been established in mutual agreements between KTH and the partneruniversities. To facilitate, the KTH curriculum was changed so that the list of courses toinclude in the exchange semester consisted of courses easily found at most universities andthe more KTH specific courses were moved to the semesters the students are studying atKTH.In this paper, we perform an evaluation of the first pilot cohort. The first year, total 24 out of160 students were accepted to the international profile. Considerably more students appliedbut did not qualify. Of these 24 students, 19 choose Spanish, three choose German and twochoose French. These 24 students were divided between three Spanish universities, twoGerman universities, one French university and one Swiss.In the full paper, we will present the outcome of this first pilot and evaluate the results.

Grimheden, M. E. (2014, June), Creating an International Profile of a Degree Program in Mechanical Engineering Paper presented at 2014 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Indianapolis, Indiana. 10.18260/1-2--20222

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