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Kelsey Harper, a mechanical engineering student, spent last winter break in Germany and Belgium as part of the Freshman Global Technical Seminar “Research Across the Borders in the European Union."
College-sponsored travel abroad has long been popular—even a rite of passage—among students in the liberal arts. Not so much in the College of Science and Engineering, where a large credit load and long list of required classes make it more challenging to t a semester of travel into a four-year curriculum. As a result, fewer CSE students have studied or traveled as part of their college experience than their liberal arts counterparts.
“That has been changing over
the past few years,” said Adam Pagel, CSE international programs director. “New programs, including a new freshman seminar launched
last year, are giving our students more opportunities to travel, study, and meet colleagues—and still graduate on time. Going global has never been easier.”
Travel pays off for students in sever- al ways—stronger resumes, sharper skills, and one more way to make an impression in an interview with a global company.
Travel helps students gain a global perspective, said Beth Stadler, pro- fessor of electrical and computer engineering. In January 2015, Stadler led one of the rst freshman Global Technical Seminars to Germany and Belgium.
“It’s sort of the ‘world is at’ mental- ity—that there’s a lot of common- ality with people,” she said. “When you’re in your hometown or your home country, you feel that there’s
a certain way things are done to be done right. When you go abroad, you realize things can be done differently and still work. But the fundamental things that matter to people are the same worldwide.”
CSE’s longest-standing travel programs have relied on partners and exchange programs, which CSE continues to expand. For example, the college just signed an agreement with the National University of Singapore to send Minnesota
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RICHARD G. ANDERSON