U.S.-European Third Global Engineering Education Workshop, Aachen, Germany, October 18-20, 2000

Virginia Polytechnic Institute And State University, Blacksburg VA

Investigators

Abstract

0083982 Kurstedt This one-year award supports the participation of 25 U.S. junior faculty in the third global engineering education workshop, Educating the Engineer for the 21st Century, in Aachen, Germany, October 18-20, 2000, and in post-workshop visits to research laboratories in Aachen, Grenoble, France, and Lausanne, Switzerland. The organizers of the workshop are Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, the Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble (INPG), France, the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPF) in Switzerland, and the Rheinisch-Wesfalische Technische Hochschule (RWTH) in Aachen. The workshop is a forum of new ideas and concepts for future engineering education and will address such issues as the internationalization and interdisciplinarity of engineering practice and the impact of information technology. Education versus training, lifelong learning, interaction between engineering education, research and industry, and best practices are other workshop topics. Participants will also visit with potential research partners at institutions near the partner hosts of the workshop. The goal is to develop future collaborations. Some areas of interest are information technology, communications, transportation, materials, and bioinformatics. The conference organizing institutions propose to track progress in matching researchers of like interest. The workshop website will feature the visit reports of these research visits which eventually could be used to determine an institution's particular strengths and weaknesses. The project takes advantage of expertise in three world class research and education institutions. INPG, EPF and RWTH offer rigorous engineering education and research programs. In addition, the workshop will lead to sustained institutional ties with these European schools and future research collaborations.