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Institute of
International Education
809 United Nations Plaza
7th Floor
New York, NY 10017
USA
Tel: +1 (212) 984 5367
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Study Abroad as a Catalyst for Student Development: The Case of Engineering Students |
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By Emily Stecker
U.S. student participation in study abroad has almost tripled since the mid-1980s, with substantial growth since the mid-1990s. For many, spending time abroad is a highlight of the undergraduate experience. Yet, a disturbing trend exists: for a variety of reasons, certain student populations are severely underrepresented in study abroad programs. Engineering students are a glaring example. While 22.6% of the 191,321 students who studied abroad in 2003-2004 were social science majors and 17.5% were business majors, engineers represented only 2.9% of the students that studied abroad. Interestingly, from a developmental perspective, engineers could benefit tremendously from an international experience. In first examining the barriers that prevent engineering students from studying abroad in large numbers, then in examining the unique cognitive developmental benefits the experience can afford them, important questions about how study abroad can be employed as a catalyst for student development come into focus.
Barriers to Engineering Student Study Abroad
In failing to study abroad in large numbers, engineering students forfeit critical opportunities for development. The most commonly cited reason for not pursuing foreign study is that the engineering curriculum’s structure makes it very difficult, if not prohibitive. Since many engineering courses must be taken sequentially and are only offered one time per academic year, studying abroad often means committing to a fifth year of study. Given the exorbitant costs of higher education, postponing graduation is a financial impossibility for many. Further, since many higher level engineering classes are highly technical and require expensive laboratories, the countries in which engineering students can study for credit are limited. Also, studying a foreign language is associated with increased rates of study abroad, and very few schools mandate that engineers learn a foreign language or allow time for it. Another factor is students’ impressions of the impact of study abroad on career outcomes. Some students believe that courses taken abroad may be regarded as less rigorous or even frivolous. Interestingly, with engineering powerhouse schools like Indian Institute of Technology and in the age of large-scale, international engineering projects led by multinational corporations, graduates’ marketability to employers only increases with international experience.
Study Abroad as a Catalyst for Cognitive Development
For many institutions, the desired outcome as students progress through college is that through coursework and social interaction, students will gradually relinquish their belief in the certainty of knowledge and the omniscience of authorities and take increasing responsibility for their own learning. Due to the mathematical and quantitative focus of engineering programs, many engineers have a general penchant for dichotomous styles of thinking. Whereas a Philosophy major is often graded on long term-papers and essay exams, engineering students are usually assessed by tests for which questions have a single correct answer. Operating in this setting, it is no surprise that engineering students may have less tolerance for ambiguity, and despite their work on collaborative deign projects, many engineers have less developed communication skills than their Humanities and Social Science-oriented counterparts.
For these reasons, the social and cognitive development associated with study abroad could have a very beneficial impact on engineering students. Many of the social benefits of study abroad are obvious: a change in environment causes students to make new connections, encourages exploration of different facets of their personality as well as increased cross-cultural understanding. In examining how study abroad can spur the cognitive development of engineering students, William Perry’s Scheme of Intellectual Development is useful. Developed on the basis of extensive interviews with Harvard undergraduates, Perry sought to “map conceptually the structures which the students explicitly or implicitly impute to the world.” According to Perry, these structures transcend content in that they describe not what a student thinks, but how they think and arrive at conclusions.
Perry described nine positions that can be grouped into four broad categories: Dualism, Multiplicity, Relativism and finally, Commitments in Relativism. Dualistic thinkers order their worlds in absolute categories; authorities are seen as the source of knowledge. For the limited student sin this group, study abroad introduces complex questions for which there are no authoritative answers, and this can catalyze the progression to the next position. For example, an engineering student with a dualistic cognitive style who collaborates on an environmental design project with a team of four Indian students in an impoverished province of India may begin to realize that engineering is not about right and wrong answers, but rather, is about shades of gray and building constructive tools in a world of competing priorities and perspectives. In short, the experience could foster the transition into the Multiplicity position, in which multiple perspectives on a given issue are recognized and all opinions are seen as having comparable worth. This mindset is common amongst students studying abroad, particularly in those studying in developing countries. Upon seeing America from the outside, and in viewing first-hand the inequitable distribution of wealth, many students may become hostile towards America, as well as believe that every perspective has equal validity. These students may feel overwhelmed by these sentiments, which is why support services during study abroad are critical.
Hopefully, study abroad can help transition the movement into Relativism, when the student understands that “knowledge is contextual and relative.” This is a critical shift, and students begin to critique others’ and their own ideas, recognizing that all positions are not equally valid. The engineering student working on the design project in India may realize that it is unproductive to be overwhelmed by thousands of viewpoints. Perhaps after writing a lengthy journal entry, the student will conclude that while engineering has human and environmental tradeoffs, especially in developing countries, and while there are merits to the many different ways of executing a project, one must analyze the available options and choose the most favorable course of action. The student begins to realize that engineering in the real world is quite different from taking a test where the professor knows the correct answers. It’s about working with others—likely people who don’t speak native English, or who observe religious customs or hold cultural beliefs in conflict with one’s own—to collectively decide a course of action, obtain the resources, and execute. For engineering students who have spent their academic life in the classroom or lab with limited time for debate and group work, this experience can be socially riveting, and cognitively, it can result in huge developmental gains.
The Commitments Within Relativism stage occurs when students have tested various truth claims and make “an active affirmation of themselves and their responsibilities in the world, establishing their identities in the process.” Many returnees from study abroad report “finding themselves,” feeling “self-actualized,” and “aware of and interested in different perspectives” and parts of the world outside the boundaries of the U.S. A large part of this progress results from the “school of experience” study abroad offers both socially and intellectually. If development is movement, then studying abroad is an excellent means of aiding student development by exposing them to novel places, cultures, and ideas that are bound to ignite new ways of seeing the world.
Fostering Development through Study Abroad: What Colleges Can Do
If colleges want to take seriously the task of fostering the psychosocial and cognitive development of undergraduates, they should develop, promote and fund study abroad programs for the entire student population, particularly engineers. A few brief suggestions will illuminate promising ways that administrators and faculty members can think about study abroad. Faculty and administrators should focus on developing and promoting high quality study abroad programs that provide coursework and internships. Given the buzz in the business world about China and India’s up and coming engineers (many of whom are receiving what used to be American jobs), engineering schools partner with universities and companies in strategic regions. At Worcester Polytechnic Institute, the Global Perspective Program affords engineering students the opportunity to work on design projects abroad. Projects involve real-life, critical research conducted in cooperation with local non-profits, government and businesses. For example, WPI students at the Venice project site developed a prototype plan to computerize the dispatching of ambulance boats, which risk getting trapped beneath low bridges at high tide. Other students studied the feasibility of new vacuum-sewer technology, collecting data designed to improve canal maintenance, and determine how the city could reduce the traffic of cargo boats, whose wakes damage buildings.
In order for these opportunities to be available, accreditation practices for engineering may need to be slightly altered to keep pace with the modern trend of internationalization. As evidenced by business education’s move to do so, this is quite possible. Until the early 1980s, the business curriculum in the U.S. was in a similar position with respect to internationalization as engineering curricula are today. Often, business students did not study abroad for the academic reasons many engineers cite. A change occurred when the two major accreditation agencies of business schools developed standards that required students to take courses in international business. In short, if engineering schools put time and resources into developing and promoting study abroad programs designed for engineers, the opportunity for cognitive, psychosocial and career development can be afforded to the thousands of engineering students that today fail to reap these benefits of studying abroad.
While the debate continues over whether the purpose of college is to engage in academic learning and knowledge creation, or if its goal is to socialize students in preparation for life in “the real world,” the reality is that colleges are social institutions designed to do both. As students transition from adolescence to emerging adulthood, their psychosocial development and cognitive styles change dramatically. For many, college is a moratorium period, a phase when exploration of different academic disciplines, world views and social behaviors are explored. In this spirit, study abroad offers a robust exercise in cognitive, ethnic, moral and psychosocial development. The fact that large groups of students forgo study abroad for financial, personal or academic reasons is something colleges must make a serious effort to ameliorate. It appears that there are a number of initiatives schools could undertake that would vastly improve the chances for engineers—as well as other underrepresented populations—to study abroad. As the world becomes increasingly interconnected, and as universities work to offer an ever-richer buffet of developmental opportunities for students, study abroad can and should emerge as a widely used and beneficial component of the American undergraduate experience.
Emily Stecker is an Ed.M. student in Human Development and Psychology at Harvard Graduate School of Education.
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