ReadinessAbstractColleges of Engineering have increasingly emphasized the importance of engineering studentsobtaining professional skills relating to global readiness. This paper describes progress in a cross-sectional, longitudinal study to examine the impact that a College of Engineering at a large, mid-Atlantic public institution has on students’ global readiness and related constructs. Data werecollected from first-year and senior undergraduate engineering students for two years (2012-2013and 2013-2014). Research questions examined: 1) previous international experiences of incomingstudents, 2) international experiences that undergraduates have during their academic careers, 3)students’ perceived value of global readiness, 4) activities students perceive to be
planned before the pandemic, the changes in oursupport systems and the focus of our team due to the pandemic were necessary items to considerin our research. This led us to include COVID-19 specific interview questions, and the resultsfrom these questions are discussed in their section within the results.4. Participants For this study, we interviewed 8 participants in various academic standings enrolled inengineering programs at a mid-Atlantic US university. The participants comprise 4 female and 4male students who hail from 6 different countries. Table 1 provides information on the studentsinterviewed with their home country, grade, and involvement. TABLE I PARTICIPANT BACKGROUND
instrument which has already been cross-validated with numerous data fromcollege-students [2], [3]. In this study paired t-tests and repeated measures ANOVA wasimplemented to compare students’ scores at three different points in time: pre-course,post-course and post-trip. Details of the data collection, survey and data analysis are provided inthe following sections.SamplingThe RSAP program in this study is located at a large R1 university in the Mid-Atlantic region.The participants are first year engineering students in their second semester and are part of thegeneral first-year engineering program in the university. The RSAP program includes asemester-long on campus-course followed by a two-week module in different internationaltracks. The