Invited Paper - Does the International Engineering Program Produce Graduates for the Rhode Island Workforce? Assessing Skill Sets and Company Needs

and Methodology: Does the value graduates of the International Engineering Program attribute to the impact of their five-year dual degrees from the University of Rhode Island on the development of their linguistic, cross-cultural and technical skills match the demand Rhode Island businesses have for a trained workforce? The following article presents and evaluates data collected from 114 students who completed the International Engineering Program, which comes with a year-long stay abroad studying and interning in Germany, between 1991 and 2011. The outcome of this analysis is cross-referenced against data collected from a focus group of corporations in the State of Rhode Island who received these graduates,. In order to better understand the overall nature of business needs, especially multilingual demands, a variety of representatives from businesses were interviewed. Interviewees were selected based upon the fiscal impact of their companies on the Rhode Island economy and upon the importance and utility of services provided to the public. All interviewees were emailed the interview questions in advance. The assessment did not attempt to analyze every business entity, and in this sense, should not be considered comprehensive. The 25-year old International Engineering Program at the University of Rhode Island was originally designed as a dual-degree program for German and Engineering majors; students received bachelor‘s degrees in the language, as well as in their engineering discipline. Key components of the program from the beginning were specialized language courses that include instruction in technical German and a six-month professional internship with an engineering company in one of the German-speaking countries. i In 1995 an optional semester of study at the Technische Universität Braunschweig was added. ii The German undergraduate exchange was eventually expanded to include graduate programs in which students simultaneously earn advanced degrees in engineering from the TU Braunschweig and the University of Rhode Island at either the master‘s or the doctoral level. iii Inspired by the immediate success of the German program, the University added similar dual degree programs in Engineering with Spanish, French, and most recently Chinese, iv which also proved successful. The German program, however, remains the main stay of the IEP programs; it boosts the highest numbers of enrolled students (Table 1). Because the German program also offers the largest homogeneous group of graduates, this article is based on data collected from graduates from the German program. 02/03 03/04 04/05 05/06 06/07 07/08 08/09 09/10 German 102 113 118 121 122 128 133 126 Spanish 37 42 45 42 52 51 63 69 French 27 27 27 33 28 27 28 29