Abstrakt

In this global world, today’s engineer is likely to have to work in global international teams with colleagues from other nationalities. The challenge for many engineering curricula is how to include, in a realistic way, this global dimension and increase the student’s awareness of the issues that are encountered. In the Purdue University Engineering Technology program, an international capstone project was created to increase student awareness of the cultural differences that they will encounter in global projects. This international capstone project builds on the existing, industry sponsored, multi-disciplinary capstone team project that is required of all students. In order to assess whether this approach can increase awareness in global cultures, the MGUDS-S form which assesses cross cultural diversity was used to assess cultural awareness and sensitivity. Ultimately this form is being used to evaluate whether the international senior capstone project approach can impact a change in cross cultural diversity. This study explores the existing differences in the populations that involved in existing on-going multinational projects—projects with students from Germany and Poland. Furthermore this study also attempts to evaluate the response to this survey tool from a population of experienced business and technical global professionals. This survey group included participants from fourteen countries from Europe, North and South America, Africa, and Asia. The goal for this portion of the study was to evaluate the areas where the student population has areas that need improvement compared to experienced global professionals and help to guide the program. Several significant differences were identified across the study populations as well as about the tool. The use of the word “race” was found to be objectionable in Germany. Across the populations, The MGUDSs pointed out that all students show much lower interest than experience professionals in participating in diverse social and cultural activities and appreciating the impact that diversity can have on self understanding and personal growth. In contrast, the survey data indicates that the student populations consistently were as emotionally comfortable and at ease with diverse cultures as the more mature professional population.

Autorzy (4)