The difficulty of engineering a trip abroad

As engineering becomes an increasingly global profession, officials at the Engineering school say their students are going abroad more than ever before - but still not as much as they would like them to.

Getting more students to go overseas is a tricky issue, they argue - and one that will require changing student perceptions about the feasibility of such opportunities.

According to data provided by SEAS, the number of students studying abroad either during the year or the summer has risen dramatically over the last 10 years, from 12 then to about 85 this year - about 25 percent of the junior class.

But Engineering undergraduates account for just 5 percent of the Penn population that goes abroad annually. Of that total, only 41 percent are staying abroad for an entire semester.

"SEAS students perceive that it is difficult to go abroad," said Joe Sun, director of Academic Affairs at the school. He cited the rigorous curriculum that many students say makes them unwilling to travel during the school year.

Still, the rising numbers are a positive sign, he said. About 35 students in the junior class - 10 percent - studied abroad during this academic year, most in Australia, Hong Kong and Western Europe .

Sun also pointed out the growing popularity of service-based abroad trips during the summer and over breaks.

But many students are still hesitant to commit their time at Penn to studying in another country.

Edward Nie, a sophomore studying Management and Technology through SEAS and Wharton, turned down a trip to Singapore without giving it much thought.

He said he figured "there are way too many classes, or you're just way too busy."

He added that the number of locations engineers can study abroad are much less "interesting" than those available to College or Wharton students.

Nie suggested that many Engineering students choose to go abroad over the summer rather than for a semester because of the wide range of options for where to go and because the classes in many of those programs are liberal-arts-based.

Most of the time, however, Sun said getting Engineering transfer credits approved is not a problem.

But while student perception about abroad opportunities has curbed the appeal of academic trips, abroad projects run by groups like the CommuniTech Service Learning Club and Engineers Without Borders, which are sponsored by the school, have grown sharply in popularity in recent years - 70 percent of Engineering students who go abroad over the summer do so to participate in a service project.

This summer, SEAS will sponsor at least four trips to Africa and China, Sun said. However his goal is ultimately to increase semester-long abroad participation even more.

"It would be great for our numbers to rise to around 20 percent of junior class size" for study during the academic year, he said.

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