Growing international internships

For engineering students, functioning in a ¿smaller, flatter world¿ means gaining an education that extends them into global experiences. These experiences are personally developing by fostering development of 1) better self-understanding, 2) improved communication skills, 3) improved adaptability, 4) stronger self-reliability and 5) stronger capacity for working effectively with others from different culture and value systems. Professional development results as the students 1) delve in depth into the practice and deployment of a technology (for some for their first time), 2) become better prepared to assume leadership roles-especially of multi-cultural organizations, and 3) better understand the core elements of competitiveness in a global context. Nearly 70% of our annual graduates have extended global engagements; 15% experience international internships. We have been growing these percentages for many years. Our approaches to growing our international internships, which serve us best, leverage businesses with a relationship to Calvin College and alumni with international activities to provide internship sites. From nine engineering students with international internships in the summer of 2008, the practices and approaches that worked and those needing improvement are highlighted. Our emphasis is to assure that the international internship is productive for all and to indicate routes to grow this program-as we believe we - and other institutions must. The goal of this paper is to describe our approaches so that other institutions can adapt them to their purposes.