a BROADER perspective

ASEE Prism, Jan 2006 by Loftus, Margaret

ONCE AN ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE FEAT, STUDYING OVERSEAS WHILE STUDYING ENGINEERING IS MAKING ITS WAY INTO THE MAINSTREAM.

As a civil engineering student who grew up in Manchester, N.H., all Caitlin Malley knew about Denmark was that it was a small country in Europe. As for the concept of car-sharing? She'd never heard of it. But the Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) senior got a crash course in both during her junior year as a technology consultant at a Copenhagen nonprofit that offers its members a time-share in cars instead of condos. Malley's eight-week Danish gig was part of a WPI program designed to expose students to problem-solving outside their majors and, often, outside of the United States. While she admired the Danes' balance of work and family and she became a veritable expert on the automation of billing and booking in car-sharing nonprofits, the real boon was a new global sensibility. "It's the most important thing I've done in college," she says. "It made me grow as a student and a professional."

Time was, study abroad was what humanities majors did. Engineering students, on the other hand, pretty much stayed put, lest their sequential coursework be disrupted. A rigid schedule and precious few electives didn't allow for a semester spent lollygagging in Europe, much less a full year-or so many believed. But in the last decade, the number of engineering students studying abroad has tripled as more U.S. engineering schools introduce ways-like short-term projects such as Malley's and Georgia Tech's immersive International Plan-to incorporate the experience into the curriculum. The trend, say educators, is critical to the future of American engineering in an increasing global economy. "We're at an incredible disadvantage as a nation if our engineers are not trained to work with people across cultures and languages," warns John Grandin, director of the University of Rhode Island's (URI) International Engineering Program.

Indeed, an engineer is far more likely to work for a multinational corporation than is, say, a doctor or a lawyer. "Engineering is a profoundly international field now," says Michael Vande Berg, the vice president of academic and external affairs at the Council on International Education Exchange (CIEE) based in Portland, Maine. "Increasingly, what engineers are faced with is that they have the technical ability to achieve major solutions, but they can't come in with a one-size-fits-all solution without working closely with people on the ground." And these days, many of those people are likely to live beyond U.S. borders. Having lived and learned outside the country helps to foster an understanding of the context of any project, be it building a water treatment plant in Central America or designing the next MP3 player for the Asian market. "Anyone who has lived abroad is more sensitive to other ways people view things that may not exactly be how you grew up," explains John LaGraff, director of Syracuse University's Engineering Year Abroad Program.

Meanwhile, experience abroad can mean the world to potential employers. Natalie Mello, WPI's director of global operations, has found that engineering students who have studied abroad are much more desirable to recruiters. In fact, says Georgia Institute of Technology Vice Provost for Institutional Development Jack Lohmann, kids who don't go abroad may ultimately be at a disadvantage.

But while the number of engineering students who go abroad is at an all-time high, the percentage is still minuscule compared with other disciplines. According to the latest data from the Institute of International Education, engineering students made up 2.9 percent of the 191,321 American students who studied abroad in the 2003-04 school year, compared with social science majors at 22.6 percent and business students, who comprised 17.5 percent.

"The trend is in the right direction, but we aren't anywhere near the proportion of engineering students [in the country]," says Carl Herrin of NAFSA: Association of International Educators.

What's keeping so many engineering students at home? "There's been a certain level of American arrogance that we are the best," claims Herrin. In fact, it wasn't that long ago that the United States was in the driving seat, Rhode Island's Grandin explains. "If people wanted products, they always looked toward us." But while the realities of the marketplace have shifted seemingly overnight, attitudes in engineering schools are still catching up. "The message tacitly is that study abroad is not important," Lohmann says. At the same time, the last thing engineering students want is a wrench in their coursework. "We are talking about students who tend to be risk-averse," Mello argues. "They are not prone to taking a lot of chances."

BOTH NEAR AND FAR

Nevertheless, some colleges have had great success in creating and promoting programs for their engineering students to study and intern in other countries. In 1974, WPI overhauled its entire curriculum to one that is project-based, which means that every student is required to complete three semester-long projects. While many students opt for domestic assignments-sponsors have included Goddard Flight Center in Maryland and Gallo Wineries in California-fully half go farther out still, from designing energy-efficient housing in Namibia to collecting data from Thailand's hill tribes. Language proficiency isn't required, but students are prepped in survival skills, like how to order in a restaurant and how not to offend their hosts. Going abroad does require planning up to a year in advance, but the results are well worth it, WPI's Mello says. "The cool thing is that you send a student out into the world once and they want to go again."