Preparing Engineers for a Global Workforce through Curricular Reform

The advancement and accessibility of Information Technology (IT) resources, as well as the express delivery of commodities and goods, have accelerated the process of globalisation. These events have created a challenging environment for developed countries to be globally competitive and coexist in an economic environment with equally competent developing countries. The strategies being adopted by several countries are for sharing a workforce that is mobile and could be relocated without any productivity and efficiency issues. Needless to say, this dictates a serious discussion in the development of academic programmes to address global engineering. The burden of reform is usually placed on developed nations. However, this cannot be achieved unidirectionally. The future holds equitable promise and advantage for both developed and developing countries. In this article, the authors encourage all countries across the world to globalise their engineering curricula. A concept for an innovative, densely-packed, four-year undergraduate global engineering programme was developed by modifying the existing industrial engineering programme at Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, USA, by introducing a Global Engineering Emphasis (GEE) package. The GEE package includes a number of modules dealing with language expectations, communication skills, multiculturism, sensitivity issues and engineering related global issues in societal/engineering/business fields. This approach depends heavily on multinational corporations in providing summer internships, relevant case studies and projects. The GEE concept can be readily expanded to other engineering disciplines.