Bridging academia and industry gap, through global competencies: Industrial outreach program us-Mexico

Global competencies of engineering graduates have been identified as traits that are increasingly necessary for professional competitiveness of graduates, but continue to be elusive and difficult to address in the engineering curricula. Study abroad and experiential learning programs have been invoked to address some of the global competencies with varied degrees of success. In this paper, a faculty-led program model developed by West Virginia University and several institutions in Mexico and the US is presented, in which senior engineering students from the US and Mexico team up to conduct meaningful engineering projects in industry in Mexico. Intermixed teams of students are formed and placed in various industrial sites to work full time under the advice of engineering practitioners and faculty members from both Mexico and USA. Global competencies are addressed in the context of a project that requires students to work with peers of similar disciplines and level across language and cultural barriers.