A multicultural, multidisciplinary short course to introduce recently graduated engineers to the global nature of professional practice

Abstract

Since 2001, the International Institute of Women in Engineering (IIWE) at EPF, Ecole d'ingenieurs generaliste, Sceaux, France, has conducted a 3 week short course for culturally and discipline diverse, recently graduated and final year engineering students. The aim of this course is to introduce young engineers to broad global concepts and issues relating to their future professional practice, through intercultural learning. The initial course programme provided examples of engineering practices in various countries throughout the world. However, to achieve an intercultural, multidisciplinary learning outcome, a specific course theme and a project focussing on sustainable engineering and the inclusion of a variety of industrial visits were introduced in 2006. This paper will discuss the success of the strategies used to engage international students in the IIWE course activities, and after consideration of the results of participant surveys, the curriculum initiatives that followed.

Which “culture”? A critical analysis of intercultural communication in engineering education

“…These papers address the topic of culture, with the discussion focusing on educational projects in which participants were tasked to collaborate with people from other countries either directly (Arzberger et al, 2010;Jesiek, Haller, & Thompson, 2014;Mehalik, Lovell, & Shuman, 2008;Meunier, Dutto, Guillet, & Michau, 2007) or in geographically distributed virtual teams (Davies, Zaugg, & Tateishi, 2014;Gonzalez, Guerra-Zubiaga, Orta, & Contero, 2008;May, Wold, & Moore, 2015;McNair, Paretti, & Kakar, 2008;Zaugg & Davies, 2013). These authors, together with Downey et al (2006), LaFave et al (2015, Friesen and Ingram (2013), Hazelton, Malone, andGardner (2009), andSoibelman et al (2011), focus on the ability of graduates or professional engineers to work with others who have been raised or educated in "foreign" cultures (Swearengen, Barnes, Coe, Reinhardt, & Subramanian, 2002), countries, or language backgrounds.…”

El campo de la Ingeniería industrial en Colombia

“…Haciendo una revisión a nivel internacional de la educación en ingeniería industrial, se observa como tendencia en varios autores: (Lappalainen, 2010), (Larsen, 2009), (Fernandez, 2009), (Hazelton, 2009), (Sharma, 2009), la de integrar el conocimiento científico y tecnológico con el humanístico. ¿Podría esto obedecer al cambio de concepción que ha tenido el modelo desarrollista, que habiendo caído en crisis al privilegiar la educación científica y tecnológica por encima de la humanista, ahora trata de vincular conceptos como multiculturalidad, interdisciplinariedad y ecología tanto al entorno organizacional como al educativo atribuyéndole a esta vinculación el éxito y la pertinencia que los nuevos modelos educativos requieren?.…”

Chemical engineering in an unsustainable world: Obligations and opportunities

“…A similar situation pertains throughout the rest of the world (Azapagic et al, 2005;Desha et al, 2009;Hazelton et al, 2009), and it has been suggested (Porritt, 2007) that; (2004): university policy, number of sustainable development related courses and specializations at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels, the degree to which universities promote the embedding of sustainable development in curricula and the extent of adoption of an environmental management system in-house by universities. The EESD survey is self reporting however, and this leads to a situation whereby all institutions for example are (self) credited with either completely embedding sustainability into their engineering programmes (100% rating) or not at all (0% rating).…”