Most undergraduate students do not have the opportunity to travel abroad and experience and develop communication skills with others cultures. However in this global world, today's engineer is likely to have to work in global international teams with colleagues from other nationalities. The challenge for many engineering curricula is how to include, in a realistic way, this global dimension and deal with the unfamiliarity with other cultures.
In the Purdue University engineering technology program an international capstone project was created to fill this need. This international capstone project builds on the existing, industry sponsored, multi-disciplinary capstone team project that is required of all students. In the international project, half of the team members are students from a non-US university. The full team works on a project proposed by companies with a global footprint in both the U.S. and in proximity to the foreign institution. Most of the global project is carried out using the full range of electronic communication tools such as email, skype, and blogs. In addition two exchange trips are made with team members traveling to their opposite foreign location. Ideally the first trip occurs near the initiation of the project for planning, organizing and conceptualization and the second at the end for final integration and demonstration for the sponsor.
