International experiences are viewed as important components of undergraduate engineering education. Yet little has been done to define global preparedness, specify alternatives for achieving it, or determine to what degree being globally prepared is the result of personal attributes, prior experiences (including pre-college), or specific educational experiences.
A collaboration of investigators from four universities (Pittsburgh, Southern California, Tulsa, and Clemson) are investigating how the broad spectrum of international experiences both in and outside of formal curricula impact engineering students’ global preparedness. Now in its fourth year, we have conducted two primary studies and are engaging in our third. The first study was an extensive Delphi survey with subject matter experts. The second study consisted of a quantitative and qualitative analysis of students at our four institutions. The third study being initiated this spring is a much larger survey of engineering students at representative universities across the U.S..
For the second and third studies, we developed and tested a comprehensive survey instrument that captures demographics, experiences and a measure of each student’s global preparedness and incorporates the nationally normed Global Perspective Inventory developed by Braskamp and colleagues. This is enabling us to identify changes in global awareness, knowledge and thinking over the course of the students’ transition from incoming freshman to graduating senior. The resultant information and tools will provide insight to engineering administrators and faculty as they consider how to best prepare students for the global economy through three linked studies. This paper offers an overview of the progress to date of our NSF funded research initiative that investigates how the various internationally focused learning experiences within engineering (both curricular and co-curricular) impact students’ global preparedness.
Dr. Mary Besterfield-Sacre is Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Nickolas A. DeCecco Professor in Industrial Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh. She is the Founding Director for the Engineering Education Research Center (EERC).
http://orcid.org/https://0000-0001-6884-7070
University of Pittsburgh
[biography]
Larry J. Shuman is Distinguished Service Professor of industrial engineering at the Swanson School of Engineering, University of Pittsburgh. His research focuses on improving the
engineering education experience with an emphasis on assessment of design an
Dr. Cheryl Matherly is Vice Provost for Global Education at The University of Tulsa, where she has responsibility for the strategic leadership of the university’s plan for comprehensive internationalization. Dr. Matherly’ co-directs the NanoJapan program, funded by the National Science Foundation in order to expand international research opportunities for students in STEM fields. She is the recipient of two Fulbright grants for international education administrators (Germany and Japan.) She has an Ed.D. in Education Leadership and Culture Studies from the University of Houston.
http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3056-5494
University of Southern California
[biography]
Gisele Ragusa is a Professor of Engineering Education at the University of Southern California. She conducts research on college transitions and retention of underrepresented students in engineering, PreK-12 STEM Education, ethics, socially assistive robotics, and also research about engineering global preparedness.
Lisa Benson is a Professor of Engineering and Science Education at Clemson University, and the past editor of the Journal of Engineering Education. Her research focuses on the interactions between student motivation and their learning experiences. Her projects include studies of student perceptions, beliefs and attitudes towards becoming engineers and scientists, and their development of problem-solving skills, self-regulated learning practices, and epistemic beliefs. Other projects in the Benson group involve students’ navigational capital, and researchers’ schema development through the peer review process. Dr. Benson is an American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Fellow, and a member of the European Society for Engineering Education (SEFI), American Educational Research Association (AERA) and Tau Beta Pi. She earned a B.S. in Bioengineering (1978) from the University of Vermont, and M.S. (1986) and Ph.D. (2002) in Bioengineering from Clemson University.
Are you a researcher? Would you like to cite this paper? Visit the ASEE document repository at peer.asee.org for more tools and easy citations.