Students enrolled in the Virginia Tech sponsored course, Project Management in the Global Village, participated in a six week study abroad experience to Vietnam, working alongside indigenous community professionals to perform on-site needs assessments of technological and sociological factors of relief and development in several villages in the Mekong Delta.

The project, sponsored by the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) International Academic Collaboration program, is part of Virginia Tech’s Myers-Lawson School of Construction Center for Leadership in Construction. This program provides students with international engagement experiences that focus on enriching their skills to help meet the demands of globalization.

Three faculty from Wake Forest University Departments of Sociology, East Asian Studies, and Religion and two faculty from Virginia Tech’s Myers-Lawson School of Construction, in collaboration with Peacework, a 501(c) 3 international volunteer and development organization, led the group of 20 students on the trip to Vietnam. In addition to Wake Forest and Virginia Tech, the University of Miami and the University of Maryland also sent students.

“The program is significantly different than most summer study abroad programs. These students combined knowledge, theory and practical application by working in partnership with local people in the village of Hoa, located in southern Vietnam near the city of Can Tho, “ said Anthony Songer, Virginia Tech associate professor of civil and environmental engineering and one of the faculty who traveled with the students.

“The students, with faculty and local community professionals, explored the real world applications of their social and technical studies in a setting with complex social, economic, political, historical and cultural issues. Over the six week period, the students were actively engaged in several activities,” he added.

As a component of their courses in Vietnamese culture, students performed on-site needs assessments of technological and sociological factors of relief and development in several villages in the Mekong Delta. These assessments were developed with assistance from Duong Ni, an agricultural scientist and environmentalist at Can Tho University.

The students who went on this trip wrote blogs about their experiences.

The service-learning portion of this curriculum engaged the students in three projects, two “Mercy” Houses and the building of a bridge. The Mercy houses were constructed using the Habitat for Humanity concept, where villagers assisted in the building process.

“Students gained a tremendous appreciation for the challenges associated with sustainable growth in developing nations, where resources are limited and not of the quality to which they are accustomed,” said Christine Fiori, assistant director of undergraduate programs, industry relations and outreach for the Myers-Lawson School of Construction, who was the other Virginia Tech faculty member to travel to Vietnam.

She added that this experience is part of engineering education’s attempt to respond to the National Academy of Engineering’s report, The Engineer of 2020.

The report calls for fundamental changes in the structure, policies, and practices of engineering education. It “urges the engineering profession to recognize what engineers can build for the future through a wide range of leadership roles in industry, government, and academia not just through technical jobs” and that “with the appropriate education and training, the engineer of the future will be called upon to become a leader not only in business but also in nonprofit and government sectors.”

This paradigm shift will enable engineers to meet the demands of globalization, which requires a much broader range of skills than technical ability alone. Technology-based concerns must be balanced with more socially-oriented demands. Specifically, elements of good design practice include the ability to define a problem through responsible judgments that embody a sensitivity to social, cultural and moral issues.

“An ideal setting for engineering students to develop these skills is by participating in service learning activities that directly relate to the health, education and provision of basic human rights in resource poor countries,” Fiori added.

Students enrolled in the Virginia Tech course kept journals of their construction experiences in the village. The course focused upon key principles of project management, including cost and time, quality, contract administration and safety. The students investigated various phases of the construction process to include pre-design, design, procurement, construction and post-construction issues for the Mercy houses and the bridge project.

Each student team investigated its assignment relative to detailed onsite issues including labor, methods and materials and equipment, as well as external project issues such as political, social/cultural, governmental, and environmental and stakeholder needs. Each assignment focused on the service project; however, students were encouraged to include observations from site visits, field trips, in-country tours, and discussions with Vietnamese students, teachers, professionals and other officials, Songer explained. “Critical to their observations was the requirement to consider the larger issues of globalization and sustainability,” he added.

“This project experience created a learning environment around an authentic problem that is meaningful to students, and forces them to balance technical solutions with social, cultural, environmental, economic, and sustainability concerns, in an environment that features multidisciplinary peer interaction and mentoring,” Songer said.

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