Project Details
Project PI's: Drs. Jessica Deters, Catherine Berdanier (Penn State)
Graduate Researcher: Nosakhare Idiaghe
Undergraduate Researcher: Mollie Petersen
Amount and Years: $599,566, 2024 - 2027
Funding: National Science Foundation Award #2414169 and 2414170
Abstract: In an increasingly global society, engineering programs are called to produce engineers at all levels who have intercultural competency (also known as global competencies), representing the ability to work with stakeholders across the world and from a variety of cultural backgrounds. These competencies will only become more important, highlighted by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, the European Union's OCED calls to global action to fight global challenges, and the National Academies' Grand Challenges for Engineering, which innately require global collaboration. Ph.D.- and Master's educated engineers are thought-leaders who will be at the forefront of developing the technologies that will lead to water sustainability, sustainable energy, and climate solutions, which are inherently global problems. However, intercultural competency research rarely extends to engineering graduate student populations. Current statistics indicate over 50% of engineering graduate students in the United States are international, yet very little intercultural competency training, education, or research is conducted for graduate students. Future Ph.D.-holders, regardless of occupational trajectory or citizenship status, must be equipped to be thought leaders to tackle global challenges like climate change in an increasingly global engineering economy. To meet this need, the purpose of this project is to investigate how graduate engineering students develop intercultural competencies "in the wild" in authentic academic research laboratory environments. Given that over 58% of engineering doctoral students across U.S. institutions are international, the research laboratory becomes a place that, if harnessed, could facilitate intercultural competency development for both U.S. and international students as future thought-leaders. This project is well-aligned with the NSF Research in the Formation of Engineers program in that it focuses on the development of critical competencies for the next generation workforce.