'Rounding-up the industrial engineering educational profile with adaptive soft skills framed by a cultural competency approach in an industry-university partnership.'

摘要

This paper details the creation and implementation of a pioneering industry-university partnership that recognizes the pedagogical value of learning experiences beyond a formal curriculum. The goal is to complement the traditional engineering education approach of producing engineers with hard technical skills incorporating educational experiences in industry. It is expected that the new industrial engineering graduate will be ready to enter into professional life with a strong technical background and being sensitive to the challenges posed by diversity and cultural differences. This partnership attempts to foster global and cultural competency by creating educational environments that favors a new type of global engineer, with a broad range of skills and knowledge, above and beyond a typical industrial engineering (IE) curriculum. The proposed educational model was founded in the sophomore and senior curriculum series of IE 316 Methods Engineering & IE 478 Facilities Planning. IE 316 introduces participants to methods engineering and work measurement fostering the development of critical thinking, self-assessment, and team work; IE 478 trains the students in the art and science of facility design and planning. Rounding-up the curriculum of these classes, this educational experience complements the student's professional profile by adding the necessary cultural competency required to produce a global engineer. The model consists of five components: identification and selection of industry partners and potential projects; attendance to in-class mini-lectures & assignment of pertinent readings supporting the selected project; student's training previous to their incorporation to the project; monitoring students' progress by supervision of peer & industry mentors and class instructor; continuous evaluation and assessment of the learning experience through weekly reports and a final project presentation to the company's CEO. Completing the educational cycle, cultural competencies are developed throughout the model components by exposing the students to interactions with industry personnel at several levels including staff engineers, technicians, and blue-collar operators with different cultural and ethnical backgrounds. The whole experience ensures the development of the students' ability to value diversity and to work effectively across cultures, while learning and practicing fundamental concepts of industrial engineering such us lean manufacturing, time studies, line balancing, quality control, and safety engineering in a real world scenario. The literature reports similar successful experiences where academic institutions are getting prepared to face challenges of globalization by partnering with industry. It is expected that this partnership will help to enhance self-efficacy beliefs in the participants. So far this collaboration has been in place for two academic years resulting in eight students benefited from this partnership; currently three of them are permanent members of the engineering staff in one the industry partners. There is an increasing interest among IE students to be part of this program; currently twenty-four students are enrolled in the current cohort. This paper provides evidence of the main findings of this educational experience and it is expected that this model will be soon institutionalized as an apprenticeship program.