Why Globalization?

For many people, the phrase “engineering education” implies images of sterile labs, test benches, mainframes, equations and problem sets. But in a market dominated by low cost overseas skilled workers, the Internet, and transnational corporations, universities no longer have the luxury to limit their students’ education to the lab.  In a global market, a significant portion of an engineer’s education, naturally, must occur around the globe.

Globalization is influencing engineering education in the US, in particular initiatives that encourage more engineering majors to seek international experiences. Globalization is driving universities to reconsider the aims and outcomes of engineering education.  Faculty from around the world are grappling with the questions of what it means to be an engineer in the 21st century global economy and how best to prepare the engineers of the future. The United States 2000 Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) criteria, which required US schools of engineering to demonstrate that their graduates have “the broad education necessary to understand the impact of engineering solutions in a global, economic, environmental, and societal context” (ABET, 2005, p.2), pushed this issue to the forefront in this country.

The National Science Foundation awarded in 2005 the first Partnerships for International Research and Education (PIRE) grants to fund these sorts of innovative program design as part of a larger initiative to encourage US institutions to establish models for international collaborative research and education. Rice University was among the first group of 12 recipients of an NSF-PIRE grant to further support the development and continuation of our unique international programming for engineering, science and technical students including the INNOVATE conference and the NanoJapan program.

In an editorial that appeared in the Journal of Engineering Education in 2003 Lohman states:

"[E]ngineering programs have ample latitude to provide a broad array of meaningful opportunities incorporating some or all of these elements, ranging from a multi-national design course to develop a student's "appreciation" of a global perspective (even if he or she never leaves the campus), to a semester of engineering-related study and/or work abroad (even if done in English), to substantial academic programs in which students are fully immersed in extended study and work abroad requiring fluency in a foreign language.  Obviously, the more students are immersed in international experiences, the better their global preparation will be."
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Text above was taken from the following article published at the 2006 ASEE Conference in Rio de Janeiro. To see full text of article please click here.

INNOVATION IN ENGINEERING EDUCATION:  SUCCESSFUL MODELS OF INTERNATIONAL SHORT-TERM, EXPERIENTIAL PROGRAMS
By Cheryl Matherly, Ed.D., University of Tulsa
Lauren Alexander, IAESTE United States
Debbie Gulick, Georgia Institute of Technology