INTERNATIONAL MULTIDISCIPLINARY STUDENT TEAMS SOLVING REAL PROBLEMS FOR INDUSTRY

Most undergraduate students do not have the opportunity to travel abroad and develop trans-cultural interpersonal and communication skills. However, 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 this global dimension in a realistic way. In the Purdue Polytechnic Institute engineering technology program, multi-cultural, multidisciplinary senior capstone projects have been created. This international capstone project builds on the existing, industry sponsored, multi-disciplinary capstone team project that is required of all students. In the international project, half of the team members are students from a non-US university. The full team works on a project proposed by companies with a global footprint in both the U.S. and in proximity to the foreign institution. Most of the global project is carried out using the full range of electronic communication tools such as email, skype, and blogs. Two exchange trips are made with team members traveling to their opposite foreign location fully immersed in the local cultural by being hosted by their teammates. Ideally the first trip occurs near the initiation of the project for planning, organizing and conceptualization with the second trip at the end of the project. One of the challenges is the synchronization of the two curricula and the academic schedules of the two institutions. This is particularly difficult between northern and southern hemispheres. This program has been implemented with projects completed in Poland, Germany, Netherlands, Denmark and Peru. A planned project in Australia had to be abandoned due to north/south hemisphere calendar issues. Lessons learned from these projects include the importance of prior intercultural training, the building an appreciation of the partner culture and having an understanding the various forms of conflict management and problem solving styles.