Though the practice of engineering is now a global enterprise, engineering education in the United States is still very much a domestic product, reports IEEE Spectrum, a publication of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. Yet a new university program aims to change that. Few U.S. engineering students spend any significant time abroad during college, even though their eventual careers might require them to collaborate with international clients or co-workers, or even to work in other countries. That has prompted Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, in Troy, N.Y., to begin requiring all of its undergraduate engineering students to spend some time overseas. The new initiative, which may be a first for an American engineering program, will start up in spring 2009 and will be phased in over several years, says Alan Cramb, Rensselaer’s dean of engineering…

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