Head of Engineering delivers plenary talk at ASEE

Kurt Paterson, JMU’s Engineering Department Head, was this year’s plenary speaker at the American Society for Engineering Education’s National Conference and Exposition in Columbus, Ohio on June 27.  

Paterson, with collaborators Chris Swan, Tufts University, and Dave Watkins, Michigan Tech, were recipients of the 2016 Best Conference Paper Award for their research “Going is Not Knowing: Challenges creating intercultural engineers.” Their work investigated the impacts that student involvement in community engagement experiences has on cultural disposition and intercultural competency.  

“This is one of the key competencies that business is seeking in modern professionals. We discovered that while these domestic and international projects are clearly transformative to our engineering students, they are having little impact on the development of our student’s abilities to work well with other cultures,” Paterson said.  This doesn’t mean the programs are not worth pursuing, but rather, like any engineering effort, "must be designed intentionally for the intercultural development of the participants and facilitated by intercultural experts, likely partners to the engineering faculty."