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How do we prepare our students for a global economy and an increasingly international research environment? What skills and knowledge do they need to act as responsible, sensible, and respected leaders in this ever more international context?
MIT's own success story is closely linked to a process of internationalization over the last decades. Thirty-seven percent of our graduate students are international and come from 108 foreign countries. About 25% of the entire student body are international students. I would guess that at least a similar portion of the faculty was originally born outside the United States.
Globally operating companies are no different from MIT in this respect. They also seek talent on an international market of human resources. And they increasingly ask: Do these young engineers and scientists have the skills, the experiences, and willingness to work in cross-cultural teams, do they understand cultures other than their own, can they serve as mediators between company operations in different countries?
During the last few years, MIT has taken much needed steps to integrate the learning and practice of communication skills into the curriculum. The new communication requirement sends our students a clear signal about what our alumni have told us again and again: Being an excellent engineer and scientist encompasses the ability to communicate highly technical work to other people who might not always be engineers themselves. Yet this goal would remain incomplete if we did not add an international component to it: communication for future leaders in science and engineering means, more than ever, communication across borders and cultures. At this point, international education comes into play. We must offer our students opportunities to learn about other countries including their languages and cultures, and they should understand how "globalization" or "internationalization" affects their lives and the lives of citizens around the world. All of this seems to make complete educational sense, yet creating opportunities for our students to engage in international experiences has been by no means as common at MIT as it has been at most other universities in the country. But things are changing.
CMI, the alliance between MIT and Cambridge University, has opened some exciting opportunities. About 35 students from each side of the ocean are currently participating in this highly structured program. Students, as CMI describes it, can have "the best of both worlds" by participating in the unique and different learning environments of MIT and Cambridge University. CMI is a great step forward for those students who would like to study abroad without leaving the borders of the English speaking world, especially if one considers that in recent years only about 20 MIT students per year participated in traditional study abroad programs.
The other cornerstone program of international education at MIT is MISTI – the MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives. MISTI's idea of international education centers around two key principles: careful academic preparation before students leave campus and a hands-on learning experience while they are abroad. A whole range of courses offered in different departments and sections at MIT give students the necessary background, including competence in the host countries' language. Students are then placed in carefully arranged internships in companies and research labs around the world. MISTI is open to undergraduates, graduates, and recent alumni from all schools at MIT. At the moment, MISTI has country programs in China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, and Singapore and sends about 160 students per year around the world.
The origins of MISTI go back to 1981 when Richard Samuels, then a young assistant professor in Political Science at MIT, founded the MIT-Japan Program to encourage students to learn Japanese and subsequently work as interns in Japanese companies, to get hands-on experience of what their famous new production technologies were all about. The MIT-Japan Program was a model for a second wave of international programs that started in the mid-nineties. In 1994, under the leadership of Professor Suzanne Berger and the support of Provost Mark Wrighton, MISTI was founded and programs in China and Germany were established. The MIT-Japan Program became part of MISTI and with the expertise of the program's long-time managing director, Pat Gercik, new initiatives were started in France, India, and Italy.
What makes MISTI different from other international programs is its deep and lasting network of relationships with the corporate sector. Around 90 American and international companies and research labs are partnering with the different country programs. A bilingual coordinator for each program is in constant contact with these companies to ensure that each internship matches the expectation of the company and the student. Many of the more than 1300 students who participated in our programs over the years report to us that MISTI provided them with one of the richest learning experiences at MIT: combining what they learned in different humanities and social sciences courses about another country with hands-on and challenging work in a company lab.
The importance of such learning "in the real world" is being stressed more and more in engineering education. Beyond the exposure to a different culture with different modes of tackling a problem, MISTI students become aware of the dramatically changing role of engineers and scientists in companies. The School of Engineering recently started an ambitious program that is designed to give students just that view on the changing tasks of an engineer. UPOP, the Undergraduate Practice Opportunity Program, plans to send eventually more than half of the school's sophomores into summer internships, albeit almost all within the United States. And FASIP, the Freshman/Alumni Summer Internship Program, seeks to interest first-year students in getting a quality practical experience. In many respects, MIT now has a whole menu of internship programs in place, from the beginner level to a challenging international internship with a MISTI country program.
Where should we go from here? While student demand is strong and a good number of faculty members are in support, it is surprising that there are still many barriers for international programs on campus. Many of our students tell us that they would like to go abroad but that MIT makes it quite difficult. Part of this is myth, part is reality. Let me start with the role of faculty advisors. I am not sure whether to put this in the "myth" or "reality" category, but there seem to be some faculty members who tell students that a) learning a foreign language is a waste of time for them, because everybody speaks English in their field, or b) that "A lab is a lab," regardless whether you do research in Beijing, Boston, or Berlin, or c) that venturing out beyond this campus is a bad idea, anyhow, because MIT is the best in every possible way.
Learning a foreign language as an adult is without doubt a time- and energy- intensive activity. We jump into the cold water of linguistic helplessness. One minute we ravel at our own eloquence, the next minute we stumble along with our rough phrases of French, Japanese, or German. The euphoria that sets in when we finally get the ball across the net, when we play our first good game in a foreign language is sometimes forgotten. The belief that you can manage with English across the world, has only limited validity. Some time ago, I visited Osram Sylvania (yes, lightbulbs) with my students to explore how Sylvania's acquisition by Siemens, the German multinational corporation, had affected the work of middle managers. They told us how grateful they were that Siemens' company language was English. "No need to learn German then," I remarked. One engineer replied that, indeed, for the quarterly meetings in Munich it was not necessary. Then he added: "But we know that the real important stuff is being discussed before and after the meeting, in the hallway, and after hours in the bar. Then our colleagues from Munich switch to German and we are left in the dark. That's why our boss learned German." In other words, to visit a conference, to have limited technical interaction, English may be just fine. For everything else, a foreign language is priceless.
What about the "A Lab is a Lab" assumption? When I relate this argument to colleagues who have spent time in foreign research and business environments, they often begin telling me amusing and sometimes not so amusing anecdotes about the considerable cultural differences in how people from other countries teach, organize their research, even think about the same problem. Physics and engineering follows the same principles of nature, but people in different cultures organize their work around it very differently. And that is vitally important for our students to realize if they want to be successfully engaged in international divisions of labor.
The third point is certainly the expression of justified pride, yet it contains also a heavy dose of unhealthy arrogance. I believe that carefully selected partners from industry, in research, but also top universities in other countries, can provide our students with valuable learning experiences that can complement the education here at the Institute.
Moving a bit more into the category of "reality" we encounter certain structural barriers that make it difficult for our students to pursue international experiences. First of all, too few MIT faculty members are aware that these international programs exist. I hope this article will result in some new contacts with those of you who are interested in international education for your students. Many of you have long-standing relationships with companies and research labs around the world and your experience is invaluable for building high-quality international programs at MIT. Secondly, we should encourage students to take a semester off if they have a chance, to do a well-prepared internship abroad. Too many students only go for the summer abroad, which limits both the depth of the cultural experience as well as the scope of interesting work that can be done in an internship. They believe that they become stigmatized by not graduating with their other classmates or they are concerned that they cannot take required courses in the right sequence. These problems can be solved with intelligent planning and an encouraging voice from departments and the central administration.
I believe international education at MIT is just starting, and given the many enthusiastic responses from students, faculty, and participating companies around the world we should take this energy and further develop and deepen such programs as CMI or MISTI. In the end, these initiatives serve a fundamental educational goal beyond increased chances on the job market and the familiarity with international networks of research. As one of our students told me after returning: "I never thought that the best place for me to learn about myself and my country was abroad."
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