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Session 2028

Educating the Global Engineer: A Program to Promote Study Abroad, International Exchanges and Diversity in Undergraduate Engineering

Lester A. Gerhardt*, Peggy Blumenthal**, Susannah Spodek** Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute*/Institute of International Education**

Introduction

More than 96% of humanity lives outside the borders of the continental United States. Of the 15 million Americans studying in higher education in the United States each year, only about 1% go abroad as part of their undergraduate educational experience. Moreover, less than 3% of this 1% are engineering students, (although the numbers have increased in the last few years.) These figures, in and of themselves, mandate that we do more to encourage an international experience on the part of our own undergraduate engineering students. This is particularly important since technology has been a (if not the) dominant driver for development in the United States both from a technological as well as financial point of view. Information Technology specifically has dramatically shrunk our world and made it a virtual work place with telecommuting and distance learning. Multinational companies have become the rule and not the exception. Consequently, the impact of technology is felt both in a cultural and societal sense overall, especially in the pervasive fields of Information Technology and Biotechnology. Any one of these statements and certainly all of them taken in their entirety suggest that an international experience be part of the fundamental education of the 21st century engineer. This will require both a technology pull from the industrial sector coupled with a technology push from educational sector.

This paper describes the Global Engineering Education Exchange (Global E 3) program, which offers American engineering students the opportunity to study engineering abroad for credit, and for international engineering students to study in the United States. It describes the program development, current status, and future directions and challenges such programs face. It especially emphasizes the importance for United States undergraduate engineering students to have an international experience.

Background and Program Development

Program History and Design With a focus towards off-campus initiatives, in 1995 a group of 15 U.S. and Western European universities formed the American-European Education Exchange (AE3). This has since been expanded to include other world regions (Asia, Latin America, Western and Eastern Europe) and was renamed the Global Engineering Education Exchange, or Global E 3. The primary goal of the program from the U.S. perspective is to provide academic and practical training opportunities at international institutions, specifically to U.S. undergraduate engineering students, focusing on their junior year. At the same time, the program seeks to minimize the increased cost and time in completing degrees usually associated with traditional study abroad programs. By forming a consortium, each member has access to a wide range of foreign institutions. A U.S. member, for

“Proceedings of the 2002 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2002, American Society for Engineering Education”

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Mook, D. J. (2002, June), Educating The Global Engineer: A Program To Promote Study Abroad, International Exchanges, And Diversity In Undergraduate Engineering Paper presented at 2002 Annual Conference, Montreal, Canada. 10.18260/1-2--10672