Going big: scaling up international engineering education to whole college initiatives

• Published in: Association for Engineering Education - Engineering Library Division Papers p. 23.646.1
• Main Authors: Eck Doerry, Harvey, Charles
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: Atlanta American Society for Engineering Education-ASEE 23.06.2013
• Subjects: Colleges & universities; Curricula; Education; Engineering; Engineering education; Globalization; Graduates; Initiatives; Scaling up

GOING BIG: SCALING UP INTERNATIONAL ENGINEERING EDUCATION TO WHOLE COLLEGE INITIATIVES Globalization has been the predominant economic theme for the past decade, leading to broad global distribution of research, design, and production teams and facilities spanning the full spectrum of science and engineering disciplines. Modern engineering graduates will be expected to communicate and collaborate across cultural, linguistic, and national boundaries on a daily basis; globalization of the labor market means that U.S. engineering graduates must be prepared to compete with international candidates for choice positions. Many institutions have responded to these new imperatives by integrating global perspectives in their engineering curricula, and developing new international opportunities directed specifically at engineers, ranging from study-­‐abroad to international internship opportunities. A small but growing handful of prescient institutions have taken this commitment to the next level, making internationalized engineering education a hallmark of one or more of their engineering programs and creating more or less formal “international tracks” in those areas. Initial data on participation and outcomes in such programs has been exceedingly positive: students attracted to such programs tend to be ambitious and academically gifted, and graduates are regularly awarded with choice positions with major global business or research entities. A significant obstacle to broad, nationwide deployment of internationalization in engineering is the narrow, custom-­‐constructed nature of most existing programs. Many of these began as small experimental initiatives, based on an a particular faculty contact or an existing relationship to a particular partnering university abroad. This makes such initiatives both difficult to scale beyond the natural capacity of the initial partnership and, more importantly, difficult to emulate in other departments, colleges, or institutions. What is needed is a robust, broadly-­‐applicable model and a set of best practices for pursuing internationalization of engineering education on a college-­‐wide basis. In this paper, we provide a starting point for this conversation by discussing our development of the Global Science and Engineering Program (GSEP), a broad internationalization initiative uniformly spanning all engineering, math, and natural science programs offered at our institution. As a top-­‐down initiative to offer comprehensive STEM internationalization tracks on a broad, college-­‐wide scale, GSEP has had to overcome a range of planning and logistic obstacles not encountered in smaller custom initiatives. Our analysis of the challenges and solutions encountered in establishing GSEP offers insights and best practices for other institutions exploring large-­‐scale internationalization of their engineering and science programs. More broadly, GSEP represents a generic model for elegantly integrating comprehensive internationalization opportunities within existing, traditional engineering programs and curricula.