Going big: Scaling up international engineering education to whole college initiatives

Abstract

Comprehensive globalization in engineering design and manufacturing in the last decades has led to fundamental new imperatives, as we consider how to effectively train and prepare our Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) workforce to succeed in this diverse, multicultural, widely-distributed, multi-lingual research, design and production network. Over the past 10 years, many forward-looking institutions have experimented with internationalized curricula and programs to meet this need, but many remain smaller scale initiatives limited to one or two participating departments or programs. In order to take STEM internationalization to the next level, we need to efficiently make internationalized tracks available as a regular, attractive option to all STEM majors, requiring a comprehensive, uniform approach at the institutional level. In this paper, we provide a starting point for this conversation by discussing our development of the Global Science and Engineering Program (GSEP), a broad internationalization initiative uniformly spanning all engineering, math, and natural science programs offered at Northern Arizona University. To help pave the way for others, we pay particular attention to discussing obstacles, critical design features, and best practices. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2013.