Work in progress — Assessing the cultural competency of engineering students

Engineers are becoming increasingly affected by globalization. An assessment tool is needed to determine how well engineering curriculum prepare students to work in this global environment. As a first step toward this goal, a written survey was developed that included questions on respondent demographics, the engineer´s role in serving society from the Pittsburg Freshman Engineering Attitudes Survey (PFEAS), if students believe that globally people define and solve engineering problems similarly, and the Miville-Guzman Universality-Diversity Scale (MGUDS-S) survey. MGUDS-S scores three areas: diversity of contact, relativistic appreciation, and comfort with differences. The combination of these areas relates to cultural competency. The survey was administered in freshman Introduction to Engineering courses at the University of Colorado (CU) and Oklahoma State University (OSU); with 191 and 93 respondents, respectively. The survey was also given to students in capstone design courses in civil and environmental engineering at CU, a graduate course of chemical engineering students at OSU, and an upper-level elementary education course at OSU. Comparisons are made between different groups to evaluate differences.