Objectives

ASEE’s international activities closely intertwine with ASEE’s vision which states that ASEE is committed to “exercising worldwide leadership” in engineering education and seeks to “encourage international communication and collaboration.” ASEE’s mission  statement commits ASEE to “facilitate international cooperation in matters pertaining to engineering education.” By offering international opportunities for collaboration and facilitating interconnectivity between stakeholders in engineering education, ASEE strives to enhance its services to the members in the United States and their counterparts in other parts of the world. Being an international leader in engineering education, ASEE seeks to facilitate productive global collaborations among industry, academe, and government and to increase participation in its activities to more completely serve the engineering and engineering technology enterprise. International cooperation in matters pertaining to engineering education is particularly crucial to the U.S. engineering community as it endeavors to enhance its capacity to attract and retain highly-skilled engineering professionals, to advance research in engineering education, and to foster collaboration between scholars and practitioners.

ASEE’s International Programs are carried out by its International Department, which has the following strategic goals:

1. Implementing annual, high-quality Global Colloquium in partnership with local universities, academia, students, multi-lateral agencies, and corporate colleagues.
   
   
2. In collaboration with engineering education leaders from the U.S. and throughout the world, providing leadership and support to the development of the International Federation of Engineering Education Societies (IFEES), and its initiatives.
   
   
3. Increasing the awareness of U.S. engineering educators and students of the global nature of engineering, and raising their competence and sensitivity as professionals in a global environment.

Activities

Global Colloquia Series - The Seventh 2008 Global Colloquium in Cape Town, South Africa had an attendance of approximately 380 participants from the U.S. and other 55 countries. The meeting included the third annual Global Student Forum on Engineering Education; a series of innovative, cutting edge workshops; a socio-economic/political forum on issues of critical importance in South Africa; and visits to a selected number of townships surrounding Cape Town in order to give a number of participants (50) the opportunity to gain direct contact with local communities and further understanding of the critical issues they confront.

With input from both local and international experts, planning for the 2009 Global Colloquium in Budapest, Hungary, is underway as well as the planning for the 2010 Global Colloquium in Singapore. Strong efforts are being made to incorporate representatives from all past and future planned ASEE Global Colloquium into the planning of each of the Colloquia and to introduce a more cooperative, conversation-based approach. Additionally, the 2008 Global Colloquium planning committee included the distinguished Professor Karl Smith from Purdue University, an expert on cooperative learning.

Corporate partners play an important role by providing both financial and intellectual resources to our Global Colloquia.  In addition to their financial support, effective in 2011 we will require local hosts to share the financial burden and responsibilities for future Global Colloquia.  We are confident that, since we now have a recognized track record for holding successful Colloquia, future local partners and hosts will provide substantial shared financial support.  We have begun those discussions with potential future hosts in Argentina and China.

The international department successfully raised US$75,000 from new corporate colleagues such as BOSCH; INFOSYS, SUNCOM for both the Cape Town Global Colloquium in 2008 and its Global Student Forum.

IFEES – ASEE is the Secretariat for the International Federation of Engineering Education Societies (IFEES), a growing global network that promotes and enables international interconnectivity between the U.S. and international engineering education stakeholder societies. Founded in 2006 in Rio de Janeiro, IFEES began the dialogue with the following question, posed by founding President Claudio Borri: “How can education in science and technology help to reduce poverty, boost socio-economic development, and take the right decisions for sustainable and environmental compatible development?” Convinced that this question can only be addressed with a truly global approach, IFEES has moved forward with the establishment of the following key initiatives:

• The IFEES Annual Summit – Each year IFEES hosts a one and a half day meeting that gathers representatives from IFEES member societies and other key engineering education stakeholders, corporate representatives, students, and policy makers to discuss pertinent issues in engineering education. The first IFEES Annual Summit took place in Istanbul, Turkey, in October 2007, co-located with the ASEE Global Colloquium. The IFEES Summit is one of the primary initiatives of the Federation, serving as a yearly forum for the entire IFEES membership to interact, share best practices and challenges, learn from one another, strengthen their ties, and plan the following year’s activities. Last year’s IFEES Annual Summit, which took place on October 19-20 in Cape Town, South Africa, was a great success. The third IFEES Summit will be held in St. Petersburg, Russia, on May 19-23, 2009.  It will be co-located with the Colloquium of IFEES member-the Russian Association for Engineering Education.  Also the Fourth Global Student Forum will be held there.
  
  
• There are ongoing discussions regarding annual membership fees.  The Secretariat is working on a proposal to be presented during the forthcoming Third IFEES Summit and its Member Assembly.  Of the current nine corporate members, five have agreed to contribute US$5,000 annually.  The Secretariat is in discussions with the other corporate members as well as with individual association members to determine a feasible annual fee structure.
  
  
• Involvement in Member Societies’ Meetings – IFEES takes advantage of Member Societies’ meetings in order to hold discussions among IFEES leadership and members on the goals and trajectory of IFEES’ initiatives.  In late December 2008, IFEES worked in partnership with its Indian member the Indian Society for Technical Education (ISTE) and implemented the first IFEES Asia/Pacific Regional Conference in Bhubaneswar, India.  Over 200 individuals participated in the IFEES conference, which included a roundtable discussion of nine corporate leaders; a Global Student Forum; presentations related to the Global Student Forum; the Indo-U.S. Collaborative on Engineering Education and several keynote presentations by IFEES leaders and the Secretary General.  Also a workshop was given by the editor of the Journal for Engineering Education (JEE) on research and engineering education.

• The Global Engineering Deans/Rectors Council (GEDC) – ASEE and IFEES provides the infrastructure for the Global Engineering Deans/Rectors Council, a leadership body of engineering deans and rectors from the United States and across the world. The GEDC Executive Committee met in May 2008 and signed the Paris Declaration, the inaugural GEDC statement of cooperation and vision. This initial meeting was hosted in Paris by Dassault Systemes and HP. The GEDC provides a world-wide form for exchange of information, discussion of experiences, challenges, and best practices in leading and engineering schools; offers a means for the American engineering deans and their foreign counterparts to partner with one another in innovation, and to collaborate with industry and other stakeholders; and build a network to support engineering deans to play a leadership role in developing regional and national policies to advance economies nationally and globally.

A full conference of the GEDC is planned for 2010. The goal for participation in this event is over 200 deans and rectors from across the globe. Thanks to the initial generous support raised by the international department from Hewlett-Packard and EG Electronics (total US$110,000) the GEDC is also planning a series of globally-focused dean/rector leadership training workshops over the next few years. These workshops will provide deans and rectors with ideas, tools, and best practices to reinforce innovation leadership in engineering. Planning for them will occur during the forthcoming GEDC workshop in Boston in March 2009, prior to the ASEE Engineering Deans Institute to which international deans are invited.

• Further Global Involvement – The IFEES leadership prepared a paper which will be included in a book published by UNESCO this spring on issues and challenges for development in engineering.  Articles written by ASEE and IFEES participants have already appeared in several publications in different countries over the past couple of years.

• Indo/US Collaborative for Engineering Education (IUCEE) - IFEES actively supports the Indo-U.S. Collaborative for Engineering Education (IUCEE). Given India’s strategic importance to academia and the U.S. economy, ASEE’s international department has partnered with Dr. Krishna Vedula, Dean Emeritus at University of Massachusetts, Lowell, and colleagues throughout India and the U.S. to encourage collaborative engineering education discussions between the two nations. The leaders of the initiative have raised over a million and a half dollars from industry and foundations to support this effort. To best identify avenues for engineering education collaboration between the two nations, IUCEE, with the support from ASEE, put together a two-part Action Planning Session in the spring-summer of 2007. The first Action Planning Session, hosted by Infosys in Mysore, India, took place in June 2007; the second Session was held at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C., from August 29-31, 2007. This Action Planning Session recommended the creation of Regional Indo-U.S. Engineering Faculty Institutes in India.

The first Indo-U.S. Engineering Faculty Leadership Institute was conducted in the summer of 2008 at the Mysore Infosys campus. Five hundred eighty five participants from 175 Indian colleges joined for the six-week workshop series. Also present were a number of participants from other countries around the world. Taught by engineering education and other topics related to engineering by top experts from faculty and industry, the workshops used the “train the trainer” format and focused on research and teaching excellence especially at the undergraduate level. IUCEE was able to raise U.S. $1 million in cash and in-kind support to carry out its work and has already received the same amount plus the facilitaties of the world-class training center of Infosys, India for our work in 2009 including the Second IUCEE Summer Leadership Institute.  As they did in 2008, at least 20 U.S. faculty members are expected to participate as trainers in the summer of 2009 again on the Infosys/Mysore campus.  We anticipate that app. 25 faculty members from other countries besides India and the US will be trained this summer.  Video training materials have been developed in 2008 and will be further developed and are expected to be made available to faculty members in the US, India, Latin America and other countries were IFEES is operating. 

ASEE and the international department received US$135,000 for our support of IUCEE so far.  The department was actively engaged in raising those funds. As a result of our activities over the past two years and specifically the First Summer Leadership Institute in 2008, US faculty members who went to India have built many contacts and connections with Indian university colleagues and corporate representatives.  We can demonstrate success in terms of recruiting Indian students and the identification of joint research projects.  A group of over 35 Indian academic leaders from second, third and fourth tier universities came to the US last November to visit our universities from coast to coast and, as a result, several MOUs have been signed regarding faculty exchanges and student recruitment.  A follow-up visit by 15 leaders from the highly respected NITs (National Institutes of Technology) will occur this March and they will again visit several US universities.

Since one of the key thrusts of the IUCEE relates to faculty development, we expect to link our experience with the evolving ASEE Faculty Development initiative proposal recently presented to the NSF.  This initiative closely relates conceptually to the IUCEE but with focus on the US.  We anticipate that the ASEE Faculty Development initiative has a potential for global impact and therefore also link to the strategic priorities of IFEES.

• Student Involvement and Global Student Initiative – Student participation is a critical component in every aspect of IFEES’ work. IFEES sees the participation of students as a balancing force to counterweight the wide ranging experience of IFEES membership with innovative ideas from the next generation of engineering minds. We are happy to report that the past president of the European student engineering organization BEST was elected a member of the IFEES Executive Committee for the 2006-2008 term. Additionally, a few globally-oriented student engineering education organizations are actively seeking IFEES membership

ASEE, as a secretariat of IFEES, facilitates and supports an emerging network of engineering students, including the U.S., worldwide. These students are deeply involved in the planning of both the Global Colloquia and IFEES meetings. Support for their involvement has come from the U.S. National Science Foundation, industry, the World Bank Institute and civil society. ASEE will continue to host Global Student Fora on Engineering Education in the Global Colloquia Series in the foreseeable future. Planning for these events takes place in close partnership with the Student Platform for Engineering Education (SPEED), a student organization dedicated to the perpetuation of student involvement in the global dialogue on engineering education.  To develop synergy with the emerging ASEE Student Division, the International Department has established contact with Dr. Ronald Barr, immediate past ASEE president, and some of the key U.S. student leaders engaged in this development. Several US student leaders involved in planning for the Global Student Forum in Budapest 2009, will be participating in the ASEE Annual Conference in Austin, Texas and use that opportunity to strengthen the ties among US engineering students and hopefully increase their engagement in our international work.

Positive steps are being taken in IFEES to solicit financial contributions from corporate members (there are currently nine corporate partners of which seven are active).  Most corporate members have agreed to contribute an annual membership fee of US$5,000 for 2009.  Discussions are currently ongoing discussions regarding membership fees for associations, NGOs and other IFEES members.  Expectations are that members will reach agreement on this critical issue during the Third IFEES Summit in St. Petersburg in May.  Suggestions are currently being discussed that link membership fees to the number of members and to the budgets of organizations.  Our office is currently discussing annual membership fees ranging from US$500 to US$3,000.   

• International Association for Continuing Engineering Education (IACEE) – ASEE is the Secretariat of the IACEE. ASEE supports this organization including the planning and implementation of a bi-annual global meeting.  In 2010, ASEE will be co-locating its Global Colloquium, the IACEE-World Conference of Continued Engineering Education (WCCEE) and the Fourth IFEES Summit in partnership with the National University of Singapore and the Institute of Engineers of Singapore.

Revenue for IACEE comes from two sources:  dues income, and a 10% portion of registration fees from the biennial conference.

The 11th IACEE World Conference on Continuing Engineering Education took place on May 20-23, 2008, in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. This event, hosted by Georgia Tech, had the theme Preparing Engineering Leaders for Global Challenges.

• East Asia and Pacific Summer Institutes (EAPSI) – ASEE’s International Department has partnered with ASEE’s Projects Department to manage and administer the National Science Foundation’s East Asia and Pacific Summer Institutes for U.S. Graduate Students (EAPSI). The program enables U.S. graduate students in science and engineering to have a two-month first-hand research experience in Australia, China, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, Singapore or Taiwan. This experience provides an introduction to the science and science policy infrastructure of the respective location and to the host site’s society, culture and language.

• Engineering for the Americas (EftA) – The director of the ASEE International Programs Department is a member of the EftA’s Provisional Executive Committee (PEC), an effort to further develop engineering and technology education in the Western Hemisphere. This initiative of strategic importance to corporations, universities and societies throughout the Americas, is beginning to take action. In 2008, the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) approved a grant of close to U.S. $700,000 in support of accreditation and activities in Latin America and the Caribbean. Other projects are currently being developed to be submitted to the IADB and the Organization of American States (OAS), which currently houses the EftA Secretariat.

• ASEE’s Globally-Oriented Membership - ASEE has over 1,000 Global Online Members. A large number of these individuals have previously attended one or more of ASEE’s Global Colloquia, and the International Department is putting efforts to encourage them to participate in the Global Colloquia this year.

ASEE’s International Department is working to strengthen its relationship with the ASEE International Division, a unit of the ASEE membership that focuses specifically on providing a forum for the exchange of ideas for multicultural and multinational activities and publishing a newsletter to inform its members of various international opportunities and activities.

Partnerships

Corporate partners

ASEE and the international department is proud of our strong partnership with several corporations which include Autodesk, HP, Dassault Systemes, Infosys, National Instruments, Mathworks, IBM, Siemens, Bosch, Agilent/India,  We are currently in discussions with several other companies that we anticipate will support our forthcoming Colloquium in Budapest.  In addition to these companies’ important financial contributions, we are also fortunate that several of them also provide considerable intellectual input into our international work.

World Bank Institute - ASEE has signed a partnership Memorandum of Understanding with the World Bank Institute and both organizations collaborated in the implementation of the Global Colloquiums in Istanbul and Cape Town, as well as the Indo-U.S. Collaborative for Engineering Education. The World Bank Institute presented a workshop on the Knowledge Economy during the Istanbul Global Colloquium, and carried out a workshop during the First IUCEE Summer Leadership Institute. They also gave a workshop at the 2nd IFEES Summit in October 2008.  They also participated in the IFEES session conducted during the SEFI Deans Conference in Berlin where US deans and other US faculty members participated.  They have just accepted to give a keynote address during the Third IFEES Summit in St. Petersburg and will most likely host another workshop during the Second IUCEE Summer Leadership Institute this coming summer in India.  Discussions will be held during the coming months to renew the MOU.

Partnerships with International Counterpart Societies – ASEE’s International Department facilitates interaction between ASEE and our counterparts around the world. For example:

• ASEE recently signed a partnership agreement with the Korean Society of Engineering Education (KSEE) to encourage collaboration and exchange between the two societies. Both parties have agreed to encourage reciprocal participation in seminars, workshops, conferences, forums, and research. The Korean Society brought over 30 academics to the 2008 ASEE Annual Conference in Pittsburgh, where highly successful presentations of papers and discussions concerning issues of engineering education in both countries took place.  A follow-up meeting in Austin, Texas, during the Annual ASEE Conference in 2009, is being planned.  

• ASEE has recently partnered with the Indian Society for Technical Education to further advance global engineering excellence through the publication of the Journal of Engineering Education (JEE) in India. The main anticipated benefits of this collaboration are 1) increased membership in ISTE by offering JEE as a member benefit, and cost effective access to engineering education research for ISTE members; 2) greater number of readers, authors, and reviewers for JEE from India, and increased research collaboration between the two nations; and 3) raised awareness between the two nations of the aspirations of each other’s engineering education societies.  The ASEE International Department is also assisting the JEE in building partnership relations in several other countries including Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, Argentina and others.

• The department received eight invitations in 2008 from colleague institutions in Latin America, Asia, Africa and Europe to participate (all expenses paid for) and speak during different events related to the programs of those organizations.  Due to time constraints, it accepted the invitations to speak only during the World Engineering Congress in Brasilia and the IFEES Asia/Pacific Conference.  It has already received three invitations to speak in different events during 2009 but, will most likely request other ASEE/IFEES leaders and colleagues to participate instead.

• The department has also facilitated connections, in addition to the US/India linkage, and exchanges between institutions in different parts of the world such as the linkage between the emerging Namibian Engineering Education Society with colleagues in Africa and Europe; the Kazakhstan’s Engineering Education Society with colleagues in the US, Latin America, India and the Middle East.  We are currently in discussions with Kazakh colleagues to explore the potential to form a Central Asian engineering education association involving five countries in that region of the world.  ASEE played a role in the formation of the Kazakhstan Association for Engineering Education and they are now a member of IFEES and have had strong delegations in all of our recent global events.  The department has also facilitated beginning discussions between the IUCEE and partners in Latin America and Africa to explore the potentials for transferring that model to those regions.

• The department is a member of the AAES International Activities Committee and worked in partnership in planning the day-long meeting on capacity building during the recent World Engineering Conference in Brasilia.  We have just begun discussions with the IEEE about finding ways to collaborate regarding the Global Colloquium and IFEES.  ASME participated in our GCs as well as in meetings regarding IUCEE.

• The department has also developed relationships with several US universities that have sent interns to support the activities of our departments.  These generally unpaid interns have made important contributions to our work.

These are only a few examples of international programs and activities. ASEE’s International Department is in constant contact with engineering education stakeholders worldwide, forging new relationships and nurturing existing ones, in order to strengthen the connection between the U.S. engineering education community and the rest of the world.

Contact

Hans Jürgen Hoyer, Ph.D.
Director for International Programs and Strategy, ASEE
Deputy Secretary General, IFEES
(202) 331-3511

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