This paper offers and tests an approach to conceptualizing the global competency of engineers. It begins by showing that the often-stated goal of working effectively with different cultures is fundamentally about learning to work effectively with people who define problems differently. The paper offers a minimum learning criterion for global competency and three learning outcomes whose achievement can help engineering students fulfill that cri terion. It uses the criterion to establish a typology of established methods to support global learning for engineering students. It introduces the course, Engineering Cultures, as an example of an integrated classroom experience designed to enable larger num bers of engineering students to take the critical first step toward global competency, and it offers a test application of the learning criterion and outcomes by using them to organize summative assessments of student learning in the course.
For over two centuries, the competencies that engineers have been expected to gain from engineering education have been associated with countries. Increased mobility in the workplace is generating pressure to expand competencies beyond countries. A key indicator of changing expectations is found in efforts by engineering education organizations to extend themselves beyond countries. This article compares the transformation of engineering education organizations in the United States with those in Europe and Latin America. In the U.S., organizations are attempting to expand directly from the country to the globe, relying upon prior acceptance of a redefinition of required competencies. In Europe, the redefinition of engineering competencies is taking longer to develop as participating organizations have worked first to define a new regional identity in terms of continental mobility and economic competitiveness. Finally, in Latin America, the redefinition of competencies awaits a resolution of a competition between alternative models of the region. This study of the expected competencies of engineers contributes to the research area of engineering epistemologies. Overall, the contemporary re‐definition of competencies in engineering education is not a universal phenomenon but depends upon success in defining identities that extend beyond the country.
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