Engineering Students Model Future of Global Business

Michigan State University students are united with students in China, Germany, the Netherlands, Russia, Singapore, and Spain to design inventive solutions to industry-posed problems in an MSU College of Engineering project called INTEnD—or, International Networked Teams for Engineering Design. The project is organized by the college's Case Center for Computer-Aided Engineering and Manufacturing and the Institute for Global Engineering Education (IGEE).

Although the final designs are what's most important to the students and their industrial sponsors—the designs, after all, are what the sponsors asked for, and what the students' grades are based upon—Case Center and IGEE representatives are involved in the project for another reason. They want to learn how student teams go about addressing a problem when teammates are thousands of miles away from one another. Their discoveries, made possible by a three-year grant from the National Science Foundation, may one day influence the way that global teams universally conduct business. The INTEnD research team is composed of MSU faculty members Erik Goodman, Charles Steinfield, John Lloyd, Kenneth David, and specialist Tim Hinds.

"We can use our classrooms as research laboratories to find out optimal ways and under what conditions we can take part in international teaming," says Lloyd, university distinguished professor of mechanical engineering and director of the IGEE. Lloyd says that although the research group is principally focusing on student-student interactions, the plan is to bridge students with engineers from across the globe, and eventually, to create international teams of practicing engineers.

Goodman, director of the Case Center, and Hinds, associate director, began the project in 1996 with the Asia-Pacific Division of Electronic Data Systems (EDS), working with Charles Steinfield, a professor in the Department of Telecommunications. Wanting to determine which technologies were most useful in helping global teams work effectively, they began by first simulating global teams, prohibiting face-to-face interaction between MSU students, and studying which communication methods the teams selectively employed.

Now, student teams are provided nearly every means technology offers for effective design communication, including workstations and PCs; video-conferencing capabilities; fax machines, telephones, and copiers; e-mail; and computer-aided design and engineering software. In addition, one notable outcome of the project has been the development of software that streamlines communication between team members. The software, called SCOPE (Software for a Collaborative Project Environment), was created by INTEnD participants to provide a place to store files, write messages, schedule meetings and equipment, and monitor progress.

Despite the advances being made in telecommunications, however, INTEnD researchers are keenly aware that some of the biggest obstacles to global teams are less technologically, and more socially and culturally, based.

"A big part of the issue is finding out what needs to happen to make a team come together as a team—to make them feel like `we're in this together,'" explains Goodman.

"A lot of studies have shown, if you want to put a group together, even if they're going to work apart from one another, it's good to start by putting them together physically. To have them shake hands, face to face, or socialize together—to find out about each other as human beings. The question is, can we substitute for some of that interaction across cultures, and across time and distance?"

One "substitute" the INTEnD research team suggests is the use of transcultural training modules, developed by MSU cultural anthropologist Kenneth David. Before students begin working as global teams, they first study video tapes demonstrating how their international counterparts work together. MSU students watch their teammates solve sample design problems, taking note of how soon-to-be partners sit, speak, and relate to one another; likewise, students from overseas watch how their American team members attack the same problems. Students are also trained on useful ways to interpret and respond to cultural and power issues that may arise during the project and, at its close, debriefed on techniques that seemed to work best for them.

"Often, misunderstandings occur between people because of differences in what one team member understands the job to be, or in what his particular role is, in relation to another," says Goodman. "And this is largely based on the different cultural backgrounds. Our goal is to get team members to notice things about the people they're going to be working with and their different styles of approach to a problem."

"Ultimately," says Goodman, "we'll develop a number of training methods that will allow us to put students from all over the world together—and the result, we hope, will be as good as something that is produced by a group of students who see each other every day."

The INTEnD researchers plan to apply the transcultural training modules to all types of global team projects, including a potential collaborative effort between the United States and Russia. A spin-off program called NEW Teams, which stands for Networked East-West Teams for Engineering Services, will create global teams between students at MSU and top Russian nuclear scientists. Both students and engineers will become proficient in the area of international cooperation, and, in turn, Russian scientists will be available for hire on a contractual basis to U.S. companies as global engineers.

"The important thing in all of this, from an engineering point of view, is not so much for our students to have the experience of studying abroad, but to have global issues become part of the culture of the engineers that graduate from the college," remarks Lloyd. "If we can make that part of their education—to be part and parcel to how our engineers think—then I think we can give our students a step up in terms of being successful in their careers."

—Jenny Cotner, adapted from Currents,
the magazine of the MSU College of Engineering

Students Embrace International Diversity a Second Time Around at ICI

I want to thank you guys for all the experiences and stories you shared with me. Whenever I get dis-appointed with apathy (in myself and others), I'll always remember the group of people at Gull Lake who have the courage and tenacity to chase their dreams and travel half-way around the world for knowledge...

I think last weekend was my best experience ever in the US. I never made so many great friends at one time. Thanks guys. Thanks for everything.

These are just some of the comments of international MSU students who took a cultural journey with American students to Gull Lake, Michigan, in April 1999 for the second biannual Intercultural Communication Institute. This year's theme was "Cultural Jigsaw: Coming Together." The two-day institute offered a comprehensive package of concurrent workshops, funded by the MSU Office of the Provost through the MSU IDEA program.

In the "1, 2, 3s of Intercultural Communication" participants were involved in role playing, games, and discussions such as defining cultures and nonverbal and verbal communication styles.

Identifying specific components of global cultural competence and developing these skills at the individual level were the focus of "Moving Toward Cultural Competence." The session was geared to preparing students to interact and work successfully in situations that demand cultural competency.

"Using Creative Conflict Management Strategies to Avoid Cultural Collisions" was offered as a skill-enhancing session. Participants developed strategies and worked on exercises for effectively dealing with conflict that results from interactions between individuals from different cultural backgrounds.

"Worldview Perspective in Intercultural Communication" had two objectives: to examine participants' assumptions, values, and beliefs and explore how they influence communication and interaction with others, and to illustrate a model for successful communication strategies for Japanese nationals in the USA.

The focus of "Third Culture: The Way of the Future?" was to exchange ideas on a topic that crosses into the areas of intercultural/cross-cultural experience and diasporic living. The session opened with a brief overview of "third culture(s)" and explored the way in which the concept operates in the late 1990s.

Finally, the highly interactive session "A Winning Balance" dealt with the increasingly diverse environments in which we work and live. It allowed participants to acknowledge differences and the impact those differences have on the world in which they function on a day-to-day basis.

In evening sessions, students enhanced their creativity and humor. One activity, "Using Water as a Means of Cross-Cultural Communication," tested participants' patience and stamina as they painstakingly strategized how to move the contents of a cup of water across a table without touching the cup itself, although they could use paraphernalia such as toothpicks, straws, strings, velcro, or chopsticks. During "Humor in International Perspectives" participants shared various facets of humor in their own cultures.

—Rodolfo "Rudie" Altamirano

MSU a Leader in Prestigious International Graduate Student Fellowships

Since 1992, 26 MSU social science graduate students have been awarded fellowships in the prestigious International Predissertation Fellowship Program (IPFP). More students at MSU have been awarded African fellowships than at any other U.S. university. At 3.6 fellowships per year, MSU is virtually tied with the University of Wisconsin for the largest average annual number of fellowships awarded IPFP universities between 1991 and 1998.

With funding from the Ford Foundation, IPFP is designed to increase the flow of talented graduate students in the social sciences into research and teaching careers concerning the developing world and to encourage the pursuit of context-sensitive social science. It is a joint program between the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) and the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS). Michigan State University has been involved in the program for eight years, along with 22 other mem-bers of the American Association of Universities.

Discipline-based, doctoral applicants propose a 12-month training program that "will prepare them to conduct theoretically sophisticated dissertation research on the developing world that is informed by knowledge of local language, history, and culture" in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Near and Middle East.

Recent MSU awardees include: 1999—mona jackson (South Africa) in history; 1998—beth dunford (Mauritania) in sociology, gina lambright (Uganda) in political science, jacquelyn miller (Tanzania) in social forestry, and andrea vogt (Mexico) in anthropology.

—Tom Carroll and David Wiley