Center for Global Engineering Engagement Spring Conference

Registration for the spring conference is now closed.

Penn State’s Center for Global Engineering Engagement (GEE) will host its virtual Spring 2021 Conference, Engineering Your Global Experiences: Building Global Competencies for the Future Engineering Workforce, on Thursday, April 1, 2021.

This student-centered conference will include a keynote speaker, networking opportunities, workshops, and panel discussions.

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Conference Agenda

All times listed are in EDT – Eastern Daylight Time (New York/Boston).

Coffee Connections – Morning Motivator Sessions
Concurrent Panel Presentations and Networking Discussions
This session is intended for international engineering educators to learn about featured best practices and to network with colleagues from across the globe in breakout discussions on current trends in international engineering education. A separate registration via Zoom will be shared with participants to access the session.

Time	Topic
8:00–8:45 AM	Promoting Hybrid Approaches for International Engineering Experiences International staff from the University of Technology of Compiègne (UTC) and TU Braunschweig (Germany) will discuss how they were able to meet the French engineering degree requirements of mobility periods, intercultural competencies, and language learning with new approaches and mobility concepts.
	Ultimate Guide: Study Abroad and Your Career The Grainger College of Engineering Career Services and International Programs staff at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign share a workshop design intended to facilitate student reflections on resiliency in the face of study abroad disruption due to COVID-19 and how to articulate their experiences as they develop career readiness skills.

Conference Opening

Time	Topic
9:00–9:15 AM	Patrick Tunno, director of the Penn State Center for Global Engineering Engagement will announce the winner of the Student Video Contest: Engineering Impact on the World Awards.

Welcoming Remarks

Time	Topic
9:15–9:30 AM	Justin Schwartz, Harold and Inge Marcus Dean of Engineering, Penn State

Building Global Competencies in Engineering Students
Concurrent Panel Presentations

Time	Topic
9:45–10:30 AM	UN Sustainable Development Goals in Undergraduate Engineering Curriculum Presenters from the University College Dublin, Ireland will share how the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals can be embedded in the undergraduate engineering curriculum in a well-designed manner and the challenges and opportunities around such an awareness and implementation.
	Curriculum Support for Global Experiences Staff from Texas A&M University’s Engineering Global Programs have partnered with the Center for Teaching Excellence to enhance impact on student learning by defining global competency for engineers, learning outcomes, learning activities, and assessment tools for all engineering global programs.
	Global Competency Development without Travel A panel of Purdue University students will discuss shift of the Purdue GEARE program due to the COVID-19 pandemic that required a switch from an eight-month study abroad experience to virtual global design teams which included language conversation groups.

Diverse Perspectives for Engineering Effective Solutions
Concurrent Panel Presentations

Time	Topic
10:45–11:30 AM	Training Globally Diverse Engineering Leaders for the 21st Century A director of study abroad at the University of Missouri and a nonprofit global organization that provides experiential opportunities in biomedical engineering in communities of need, describes the impact of the Engineering, Diversity, Global Engineering and Service (EDGEs), a diversity and inclusion-oriented curriculum in a short-term intensive undergraduate study abroad program.
	Developing Engineering Student’s Global Competencies Using Globally Distributed Capstone Team Projects To prepare their students for the global market of engineering, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, and Penn State have formed a collaborative class curriculum that provides learning of global-oriented professional skills and competences using a distributed team setting.
	Students’ Experiences in a Virtual Experiential Learning Program Presenters from three teams of students at the University of Cincinnati, the University of Cape Coast in Ghana, and Bahir Dar University in Ethiopia will discuss their experiences and perspectives in a virtual international collaborative experiential learning program (VICEP).

Engineering for Humanity
Concurrent Panel Presentations

Time	Topic
11:45 AM–12:30 PM	Long-Winded: The Penn State Wind Energy Club’s Mission A student panel from Penn State’s Wind Energy Club will discuss how the student organization can rework its goals with a focus on the global and humanitarian impacts of wind energy as framed within the United Nation Sustainable Development Goals.
	Why Do Ethics Matter for the Future Engineers? The inclusion of ethics training will be highlighted as a practice to train engineers to exercise non-technical values and embed them into their final design products.

Keynote Speaker

Time	Topic
12:30–1:15 PM	Lloyd Risser, Control Systems Engineer, Bechtel

Student registrants should choose one of the following concurrent interactive sessions:

Time	Topic
1:30–2:30 PM	Who Are We? A Cultural Exchange Simulation This session will provide student conference registrants the opportunity to engage with their peers in an interactive session which will challenge participants to exercise their creativity, to think about the foundations of culture, and to look at their own cultural background using a new lens. A separate Zoom link for registration will be sent to student registrants in advance. Only thirty participants can be accommodated in the session.
1:45–2:30 PM	Sharing Your Global Experience with Employers Staff from Penn State’s Engineering Career Resources & Employer Relations will offer a presentation on how to incorporate their global experiences into their professional job search. Following the presentation, students will have the opportunity to meet with Penn State Global Engineering Fellow alumni, who are currently working in industry, for an individual consultation on how to articulate their global experiences with employers.

All students are welcome to attend. Event log in information sent to registered students only.

Global Engineering Networking Event with Industry Representatives

Time	Topic
3:00–5:00 PM	Student participants will have the opportunity to connect with employers virtually to discuss co-op, internship, or full-time opportunities. The event will take place on the Brazen Careers platform which allows for one-on-one text and video chats with employer representatives.