Thinking Globally, Acting Locally: Strategies For Improving International Experience And Employability Skills Of Undergraduate Students Of Vehicle Engineering

This paper presents the strategies and academic measures in place in an undergraduate vehicle engineering program, which aim to provide students with the experience and skills demanded by the vehicle industry, both global and local. The demands placed on graduates of engineering programs in the workplace are manifold, regardless of where they work. Companies expect graduates to come equipped with engineering expertise, problem-solving skills, the ability to work alone and in teams, knowledge of business and management practices, as well as communication and interpersonal skills, foreign language proficiency, and some form of international experience. Nowhere is this more prevalent than in the vehicle sector. With this in mind, a compact engineering curriculum was developed in close cooperation with the automotive and railway industry in Austria to meet the needs of the evolving local and international markets. The curriculum, based on a broad palette of engineering subjects, project work, a mandatory internship, business and management training, and English as a second language, is still in place over a decade later, with a number of important additions. This paper will describe the main features of the curriculum as it is today and show how the implementation of specific academic measures to the degree program has been a vital step towards providing a more all-round educational experience. It also aims to illustrate how, in the absence of a specifically designated ‘global engineering program’, a greater international dimension can be added to an already compact and demanding engineering program to the benefit of all the students.