Preparing Engineers For Global Workforces: A Research University’s Response

There is a growing concern among universities that students in undergraduate and graduate engineering programs will be unprepared or underprepared to work in global workforces. The National Academy of Engineering, in their 2005 publication, Engineers for 2020, urges university engineering schools nationwide to embed curriculum and assessment measures in their academic programs that provide opportunities and metrics that meet this international challenge. Specifically, the National Academy of Engineering charges universities and colleges to prepare engineers that are leaders in engineering fields with strong communication, leadership and interdisciplinary research, and professional skills in diverse in engineering environments. This paper describes the University of Southern California, Viterbi School of Engineering’s response to this important National Academy of Engineering challenge. This paper will describe both curricular research and metrics associated with global preparedness for working in diverse engineering contexts. In this study, engineering students received interdisciplinary globally focused training via their coursework and laboratory experiences and were assessed as to their preparedness to work in global workforces and research environments. A global preparedness index was developed and administered to assess the impact of these educational and research experience with a summative focus. Results of this important metric were compared to students’ course grades, engineering efficacy and outcomes-based academic program success. Results of this research indicate that engineering students who were most globally prepared were also most efficacious and received higher grades in courses. Additionally, diversity in preparedness among the subscales of the index was noted, suggesting that students with diverse demographic profiles have diverse preparedness indices.