Measuring engineering students' ability to thrive in diverse and global environments

Engineering programs, professional associations, and industry stakeholders emphasize the importance of preparing graduates for an increasingly global, rapidly changing environment. Although there has been increased attention to prepare undergraduates for a global engineering profession, there are challenges associated with measuring how cultural programs and experiences contribute to positive changes in students' abilities to work and thrive in diverse environments. Global competency can be defined broadly as "having an open mind while actively seeking to understand cultural norms and expectations of others, leveraging this gained knowledge to interact, communicate and work effectively outside one's environment"¹. Measuring global competency levels before and after participation in cultural programs may therefore be a potentially effective method for measuring changes in students' ability to work in a global environment. Currently, studies on engineering students' baseline global competency levels are few at the undergraduate level. This research fills this gap, proposing a conceptual model of the factors that influence global competency levels, and also identifies the baseline levels of global competency for benchmarking. The resulting conceptual model and global competency measures will be useful toward larger scale inquiries to evaluate how participation in study abroad programs, international experiences, culturally-relevant curricula, and other related activities can contribute to changes in students' ability to work in diverse environments. The Miville-Guzman Universality-Diversity Scale short form (MGUDS-S) measures the "universe-diverse orientation" construct, which "reflects an attitude of awareness of both the similarities and differences that exist among people"². Higher MGUDS-S scores have been associated with a relative positive attitude toward others and the "simultaneous appreciation of both the similarities and differences that exist between oneself and others." Therefore, MGUDS-S is used here as a proxy for students' global competency levels in our conceptual model. Based on ordinary least squares regression models using data from 1,461 engineering freshmen, significant differences between MGUDS-S scores were identified. Female students scored higher than their male counterparts, while international students scored higher than domestic students. Among domestic engineering students, gender and ethnicity are associated with differences in MGUDS-S scores. These findings are consistent with results from previous studies, and suggest that women and underrepresented minority students, as well as international students, may receive higher scores since they may be more likely to interact with others from different backgrounds. These findings contribute to a burgeoning line of scientific inquiry lending support to programs that promote student travel abroad experiences and increased interactions between diverse groups of students. This research also has broad implications for providing information to academic institutions and key stakeholders to develop strategies toward the professional formation of engineers who can engage in an increasingly globalized environment.