Strategies for Successfully Increasing Engineering Study Abroad Participation

Studying abroad provides students with many benefits including the ability to work within culturally diverse settings, live and work in ambiguous circumstances, and creatively solve problems. This in turn benefits industry by increasing the cultural competence, intercultural communication skills, and adaptability of the future workforce. However, the many barriers to study abroad faced by engineering and computer science (CS) students result in only 11-13% of bachelor degree recipients in these fields nationally having studied abroad. In contrast, at Vanderbilt University typically 20% or more of our engineering/CS students study overseas. Participation continues to rise with ~30% of current seniors having studied abroad. To achieve these results, strategies to address curricular integration, language barriers, and financial obstacles are used and are described in this report.