An International Cooperative Education Experience For Engineering And Technology Students

Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) and the Berufsakademie Mannheim (BA-M), a cooperative education university located in Mannheim, Germany, have a unique student cooperative education exchange program that has served a total of forty IUPUI students and forty-eight BA-M students for the past 10 years. Sixty-eight percent of the students who have participated in the program have been engineering and technology students. The IUPUI exchange students spend approximately eight weeks working in a business or industry in Germany, while students from the BA-M do the same in the Indianapolis area. Work assignments and housing are arranged for the students by the hosting institution. The German students normally begin their exchange in mid January while the IUPUI students commence in mid-May. In most situations, all students are normally placed in a family home while participating in the program. This paper will provide a review of the program over the past decade from an IUPUI perspective. It will include all benefits, challenges, results, and rewards for the participating students, companies, and the institutions.