Intercultural Skill

An engineer in the 21st century needs a host of capabilities.  These capabilities start with deep technical competence, of course.  But this is not enough.  Within the volatility that will characterize the new normal an engineer must also develop creativity, an entrepreneurial mindset, a collaborative approach to work, social and environmental responsibility, communication efficacy, and intercultural skill.   These are not independent capabilities, of course.  Intercultural skill, for example, encompasses the ability to deal with ambiguity, the development of flexibility, respect for others, cultural empathy, and awareness in communication informed by a knowledge of culture; these attributes contribute to many of the other capabilities.  But how does a student develop these intercultural skills?

It is possible to study other cultures, or take courses on intergroup relations such as Sociology 122, or pursue an academic minor focused on a specific part of the world, or a broader minor such as the International Minor for Engineers.  But intercultural skill requires practice; it cannot be learned only by listening in lecture.  So wise students will elect to collide with another culture and perhaps learn intercultural skills by experience; the obvious way to do this is through the rich experience of study abroad.

The efficacy of study abroad has been studied in several ways, and these studies inform how students can best take advantage of the experience.  Williams (Journal of Studies in International Education, 9, pg. 356, 2005) shows that students who study abroad have a greater increase in their intercultural communication skills than those who do not.  But his work also shows that simply studying abroad is not enough: it is the meaningful interaction with other cultures that leads to growth in intercultural communication skills.  The experiential environment of study abroad can work, but only if students really interact with another culture in as many ways as possible.

Yet it is also important to recognize that a student’s intent plays a role in their learning in an experiential environment.  Just experiencing another culture will not make students better at dealing with another culture.  Kitsantas (College Student Journal, 38, pg. 441, 2004) shows that students doing study abroad increase their intercultural skills when they approach their study abroad with the intention of learning intercultural skill. Students must approach the experience with the intention to learn, and must reflect on the experience in order to gain the benefit.

At the University of Michigan our students are ideally placed to greatly increase their intercultural skills.  They can interact with other cultures through many study abroad programs, and they can interact with other cultures right here on our campus.  But they must invest in the effort with some intentionality, reflection, and honest discussion on the experience.  Doing so will help students gain one of the core competencies of a 21st century engineer: intercultural skill.

Competencies

Photo by Linda Peterson

Phil Hanlon is the Provost of the University of Michigan.  His job requires thinking about the future of higher education, and I recently listened to him reflect on the skills our students will need in the future.   He observes that the last 50 years in the United States have not, when seen the broad sweep of human history, been normal.  Most of us have grown up and been educated in a time of unprecedented prosperity and stability.   All the indicators are that the 21st century will be more volatile, activity will be globally interconnected, organizations will be smaller and more flexible, employees will shift jobs often, and they will have to reinvent themselves many times.  How, in four years, do we prepare students for this uncertainty?

In engineering education for the last 50 years, until very recently, we have focused on “engineering science,” fundamental scientific and mathematical tools that can be applied to the analysis of engineered systems.  More recently there has been increased focus on design and open-ended problem solving.  It’s not enough.

To prepare our students for a lifetime of contribution to solving the uncertain problems of the world, our graduates need to possess:

1. Sophisticated learning skills, because what students learn in college will be woefully inadequate to their subsequent 50 years of active contribution to society.
2. Communication skills, to allow them as engineers to communicate with each other, with clients, and with the broader society they serve.
3. Global and cultural understanding to analyze the human needs and human contexts, and ethical implications, of engineered solutions.
4. Creativity and an entrepreneurial mindset to identify opportunities, create ideas, design solutions, and persist through setbacks.
5. Leadership and project management skills, including ethical tools, to support working in and leading diverse teams for the benefit of diverse clients.
6. Sustainability principles to evaluate the environmental consequences of engineering choices.
7. Fundamental knowledge of a discipline, to give focus to their education and early career work, and a foundation on which to build later disciplinary knowledge.

Traditional engineering education focuses mostly on the last, and most specific of these competencies.  But the broader competencies of the first six are the more generalizable ones, that will support a graduate over many decades of productive life.   These broad skills can be inculcated in a college education, but to master many of these skills requires not lectures, but instead reflection on experiences.

Provost Hanlon believes that we need to provide more active learning experiences for our students.  Experiences like study abroad, service learning, student project work: these activities provide the environment in which teachable moments can arise that allow discovery of the generalizable principles of learning, or effective communication, or of cultural understanding.  The challenge for us as teachers will be to ensure that these teachable moments actually lead to learning.

Acknowledgement: the ideas in this post are built from contributions from many colleagues, most notably Stacie Edington and Phil Hanlon.