Producing globally competent engineers: Results of two workshops

Global Competency is a desired quality in engineering graduates today. Global Engineering Education to produce such graduates comes in many sizes and styles. Some universities concentrate on sending students abroad while others create globally distributed teams based at home and abroad to give students a taste of the global economy and supply chain after graduation. Companies agree that global competency is an important attribute of new graduates in many fields including engineering. Universities and faculty are struggling with knowing how best to both define Global Competency and to implement and fund global education to give both students and industry what they need. The first Global Engineering Education (GEE) Symposium at Arizona State University, held in February 2004, was designed to allow free-form, yet directed conversation about how best to produce globally competent engineering graduates. Results included ranked issues and strategies to address barriers to GEE, together with a prediction of what GEE will look like in the year 2030. The participants' enthusiasm has carried over and they are organizing a follow-up GEE Symposium to be held in 2006. This paper presents, but does not analyze the results of the first symposium to characterize definitions and approaches to Global Engineering Education from the standpoint of faculty, students, government and industry. The emphasis on the first workshop was in defining the environment and goals. The second workshop will focus on strategies both directly about program implementation and in how to assess Global Competency.