Forming global engineers: A freshman engineering design course with a multinational design project involving Latin American institutions

The establishment of new regional economic alliances beyond the frontiers of a single nation has required that engineers be prepared to work in an economy that is now best seen as essentially international in nature. It is evident that future engineers should have a better understanding of the global economy, awareness of cultural diversity, and appropriate training to work in multidisciplinary and multi-national teams. This paper describes an adaptation of the first year Introduction to Engineering Design course at Penn State that has been tailored not only to teach the basic concepts in design, innovation and creativity, but also to introduce in experimental sections the concept of global design, and expose the students to other cultures through multinational projects. Students are required to work in global design teams with students from institutions in other countries. They are challenged to solve a design problem and to use effectively the available technology for communication. This multinational project provides students the opportunity to work in a global distributed team, learn the value of different ideas from different cultures, gain knowledge of design opportunities in other countries and become skilled at how to use collaborative tool effectively.