2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Factors Impacting the Development of Intercultural Competence in Engineering Students' Long-term Study Abroad

Presented at International Division (INTL) Technical Session: International Programs and Curricula II

The paper investigates factors determining the potential for engineering students’ professional and personal growth, intercultural development and transformational change after a year of studying and interning abroad in Europe and Asia. Participants were enrolled in the university X program Y. They double major in an engineering discipline and a second language and spend their senior year abroad studying and interning as a mandatory part of their program, then return to campus as part of their 5th and final year where they take capstone courses in their respective engineering disciplines and the highest sequence of second language, culture, and literature courses.

Authors

Dr. Sigrid Berka The University of Rhode Island [biography]

Sigrid Berka is the Executive Director of the International Engineering Program (IEP) at the University of Rhode Island, Professor of German and also the Director of the German and Chinese IEP, responsible for building academic programs with exchange partners abroad, corporate relations, and fundraising for the IEP. Sigrid served as Editor, with Editor-in-Chief Brent Jesiek (Purdue University), of the Journal of International Engineering Education (JIEE) until 2022. She is a certified Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) coach facilitating intercultural competency training for IEP students. Biannually the IEP organizes the Colloquium on International Engineering Education.

Together with an interdisciplinary team of engineering and languages faculty (Megan M. Echevarría, Bing Mu, Vinka Oynadel-Craver, Iñaki Pérez-Ibáñez) Sigrid is the PI of a $149,000 NEH Connections Implementation grant: “A New Model for Integrated Humanities and Engineering Education.” (2023-2025). Sigrid received the DAAD Alumni Association’s Excellence Award for Educational Exchange (2019) and the URI Administrative Excellence Award (2019). Under her leadership, the IEP was awarded NAFSA’s Senator Paul Simon Spotlight prize for innovative campus internationalization (2011), and the Andrew Heiskell Award (2012) by the Institute for International Education.

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